'Earnestly contending for the faith,' (Jude 3 ) as well as sharing encouragement and hope through Scripture, (Romans 15:4) and through the poems that I write. One of many voices on the Internet warning Christians of the importance of testing the teachings of men (and women) against the unchanging truth of God's Word. (Acts 17:11) I 'warn you with tears' through much of what I write, to 'be on guard against the savage wolves that will come in among us who will distort the Word of God' as God's Word warns us about in Acts 20:26-31

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Tag Archive: Catholicism

After the alleged miracle of the sun took place at the Cova de Iria in Fatima, Portugal on October 13, 1917, it caused many people to come to the conclusion that the little shepherd children were not lying about the visions they had claimed to have seen of the Virgin Mary. At this point even more people began to flock to the homes of the children: Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta. The disturbing details concerning what happened in the years that followed were revealed on the final pages in the little book about the apparitions of Fatima that I received back in the 1980s from my Aunt Lee who was a nun for many years. Most people (including myself), who are familiar with the apparitions of the Virgin Mary that took place at Fatima, are unaware of the fact that Lucia allegedly continued to see visions of the Virgin Mary after 1917. Before we look into these events, here is a very brief summary of what happened a few years after that last apparition took place at Fatima based upon the information that I learned from reading my little book:

Francisco and Jacinta, the two little shepherd children and cousins of Lucia, died as a result of the 1918 influenza epidemic that broke out in Europe; Francisco died on April 4, 1919, and Jacinta died on February 20, 1920. Because of the constant intrusions in the lives of Lucia and her family, it got to the point where the local Bishop thought it best to have her sent away to a convent school where no one would know her. She was given a new name and was told not reveal her true identity or to ever mention anything about Fatima.

Here are a few more brief excerpts from my book concerning the apparitions at Fatima. The pictures that you will see below are examples of the illustrations that were included in this little book and should cause those of you who are truly born-again, Bible believing, discerning Christians, to shudder at what they are clearly conveying!

The main thing I would like to draw your attention to concerning the first vision is the fact that Jesus Christ is revealed as a mere child. Thus the focus, once again, is placed upon Mary as the one who is presented as having the more dominant position of power.

“In the convent, Our Lady did not leave Lucia alone. She came to visit her many times. At the Cova da Iria , Our Lady had already told Lucia of the bitter sorrow of her heart over the ingratitude and sinfulness of mankind. She asked that the first Saturday of each month be set aside by all as a day of reparation to her Immaculate Heart. Our Lady again appeared to Lucia on December 10, 1025, while she was in her room at the convent. The Child Jesus was at Our Lady’s side, elevated upon a cloud of light.”

“Our Lady resting one hand upon Lucia’s shoulder, held in her other hand a heart surrounded with sharp thorns. The Child Jesus spoke first to Lucia:

“Have pity on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is covered with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation.”

Then Our Lady said to Lucia:

“My daughter, look at my Heart encircled with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. Do you at least try to console me and announce in my name that I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to Confession and receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary and keep me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to me.”

“Lucia could never forget this vision of Mary’s bleeding heart. She informed her confessor and her superior of this apparition but they felt unable of themselves to spread this devotion. A year passed and on the 15th of December, 1926, the Child Jesus again appeared to Lucia, inquiring if she had spread this devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. She told Our Lord how her confessor had pointed out to her so many difficulties, and thought the Mother Superior ardently desired to propagate the devotion, her confessor also warned her that she could do nothing by herself.”

“It is true that your Superior alone can do nothing, but with My grace she can do all,” Our Lord answered.

“Lucia had not yet been given permission to reveal all that Our Lady had spoken to her at the Cova da Iria. She did, however, had permission to reveal the need of reparation and the devotion of the First Saturdays. It was in 1927, while she was praying in the convent chapel at Tuy, Spain, where she was then stationed, that she received permission from Heaven to reveal the first two parts of the secret, the vision of Hell and the urgent need for devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

“You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wants to establish throughout the world the devotion to my Immaculate Heart. …I shall come to ask the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart.”

“Two years later, in 1929, Our Lady again appeared to Lucia while she was praying in the chapel at Tuy. This was the time chosen by Our Lady to ask the fulfillment of her previous request: “I shall come to ask the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart… If they heed my request, Russia will be converted and there will be peace.” Our Lady explained that this consecration should be made by the Holy Father in unison with all the bishops of the world.”

In the picture above that depicts the vision that Lucia allegedly saw as she prayed in the chapel, you will notice that God the Father is revealed as having a body, which reflects the teachings of Mormonism, not Biblical Christianity!

“God the Father is the Supreme Being in whom we believe and whom we worship. He is the ultimate Creator, Ruler, and Preserver of all things. He is perfect, has all power, and knows all things, He has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” (Mormonism – Doctrines and Covenants 130:22) (See videos below under Related Videos to become aware of the unbiblical nature of Mormonism).

God’s Word says the following:

“God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:24)

Also in the illustration above of the alleged vision, you will notice that instead of Jesus Christ being revealed as our Risen, Glorified Savior, He is revealed as the crucified Christ, which is how Jesus is mainly presented to Catholics through their teachings, especially during the Sacrifice of the Mass when it is said that the bread and the wine become the literal body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ through the process of what’s called transubstantiation. This also is symbolized in the illustration of the vision by the host and the chalice representing the body and blood of Christ being offered again and again during every Mass for the sins of the living and the dead. Once again, this vision does not present Biblical truth since God’s Word clearly says:

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1,2)

“If God is for us who can be against us, He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, –how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died –more than that, who was raised to life —is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” (Romans 8:31b-34)

“When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, He went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God!” (Hebrews 9:11-14)

“For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did He enter heaven to offer Himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.” (Hebrews 9:24-28)

“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18)

“Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear you.” (Isaiah 59:1,2)

“In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” (Ephesians 3:12)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16,17)

“The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” (John 3:35,36)

“You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ who is Lord of all.” (Acts 10:36)

“Against all hope Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead –since he was about a hundred years old –and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness –for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to live for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” (Romans 4:18-25-5:1)

“Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he [Jesus Christ], Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) (Hebrews 10:8-23) (Insertion [Jesus Christ] added).

Dear Catholic — and each and every one of you — did you grasp the good news of the Biblical gospel after reading God’s life-giving truth in all of those verses? For those who choose to place their trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ as our sin offering — our substitute who bore our sins and took upon Himself the full wrath of God that was intended for us because of all of our sins — and believe that Jesus Christ arose from the dead for our justification, we are then covered with His righteousness, and we can then draw near to God in full assurance of faith. That truly is good news!

Jesus Christ is our only Mediator! (1 Timothy 2:5) We cannot come to God through the saints or through Mary, even though you are being taught that. God did everything necessary to remove the barrier of sin that separates us from Himself, a God who is thrice Holy. Peace can only be found though Jesus Christ.

There is no need for God to send Mary with messages for us. His Word is filled with all of the truth and hope that we need to help us find peace and forgiveness for our sins through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

God’s Word is also filled with many prophecies that have already come to pass which shows the accuracy of His Word. Many prophecies in God’s Word reveal the condition that our world will be in shortly before the return of Jesus Christ. The things that we are presently witnessing in our world signifies that we are indeed living in the last of the last days!

“People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them.For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man.People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything.Remember Lot’s wife!Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left.Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” (Luke 17:23-36)

NOTE: I would like to point out here that many wrongly teach that this passage presents an example to support the pretribulation rapture view, a position that I hold to because it teaches the only position that lines up with Scripture by having us look for the imminent return of Jesus Christ. I always accepted that interpretation of this passage, until one day as I was reading it again, the next verse caught my attention and my eyes were opened to see the truth! As I read the reply Jesus gave when He was asked where these people were taken to, it clearly shows they were not taken to a glorious place like heaven, as you will also see!

“Where, Lord?” they asked. He replied, “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.” (Luke 17:37)

Continuing on with a few more Scriptures to show how God’s Word shows us how the condition of our world will be like in the last days before Jesus Christ returns:

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

“Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4)

The return of Jesus Christ could be much sooner than any of us could ever imagine! Look to Jesus, not to Mary!

Some of the messages given in these many different apparitions (which I will share with you in the next post –Lord willing) make it appear as if Mary is the one who is accurately predicting the condition of our world, when in fact it is God who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, moved upon those holy men in times past to record His Words to us concerning what the condition our world would be like when the time was drawing near for the return of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Bible prophecy is being fulfilled right before our very eyes!

Please do not be deceived by thinking that these apparitions are of the virgin Mary when so many of the messages given contradict God’s Word!

For those of you who read Glenn Chatfield’s blog, THE WATCHMAN’S BAGPIPES, you may have seen one of his recent posts in which he shared how he found some cards at a Catholic church with some artwork. These cards were to be given to those who would be attending Mass. Notice how the depiction of the Trinity looks very similar to the illustration of Lucia’s vision:

Let’s continue on with a few more disturbing excerpts from the book on the apparitions that continued after 1917 before we bring this post to an end:

“Lucia asked for the consecration of the world to Mary’s Immaculate Heart with a special mention of Russia. The Pope deliberated long and prayerfully upon this request of Mary. In 1942, the clergy and people of Portugal celebrated the silver anniversary of the apparitions of Fatima. On the last day of October of the same year, the Bishops gathered at the Cathedral of Lisbon to join with the Holy Father in fulfilling the request of Our Lady. The Pope at that time consecrated the Church and the world to her Immaculate Heart, including the people of Russia by these words:

“Give peace to the peoples separated from us by error or by schism and especially to the one who professes such singular devotion to thee and in whose homes an honored place was ever accorded thy venerable icon (today perhaps often kept hidden to await better days); bring them back to the one fold of Christ under the one true Shepherd…” Six weeks later, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, in the presence of 40,000 people, the Holy Father repeated this consecration at St. Peter’s in Rome. This consecration was a decisive event in the history of the world; it marks the beginning of a new era, the Age of Mary.” (Emphasis added)

“The following spring, Our Blessed Lord appeared to Lucia to express the joy of His Heart over this consecration.”

“Last Thursday at midnight, while I was in chapel with my superior’s permission, Our Lord said to me, “The sacrifice required of every person is the fulfillment of his duties in life and the observance of My law. This is the penance that I now seek and require.”

Below you will see one of the very last statements in this little book concerning Mary that clearly reveals how Catholicism attributes to Mary the power to do what only Jesus Christ alone has already accomplished and will ultimately bring to fulfillment at the very end of time:

“Also, the Rosary gives Mary new power to crush the head of the Serpent and to destroy his evil power over the world.” (Emphasis added).

No, dear reader — Catholic or otherwise — Jesus Christ alone defeated the Serpent known as Satan at the cross! The final words that He uttered from the cross, “It is finished,” (John 19:30) made that abundantly clear!

Here are some more Scriptures that show Jesus Christ destroyed Satan’s power at the cross, and will ultimately be the one to send him to the bottomless pit for all eternity!

“He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”(Colossians 2:13b-15)

“Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.” (John 12:23-33)

“But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment:about sin, because people do not believe in me;about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer;and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.” (John 16:7-11)

“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” (Romans 16:20)

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14,15)

Dear Catholic, though Mary was humble and obedient, and had a deep love for God, she played no part in bringing about our actual salvation no matter what you have been taught. Out of her love for God she put aside all of the concerns that she must have had and willingly submitted to God and became the virgin mother of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the second Person in the Trinity. Jesus took upon Himself human flesh and willingly came into our world to live the perfect, sinless life that you and I could never live, to become the perfect sacrificial Lamb of God –He became our substitute and died in our place for all of our sins, guilt, and shame.

In the following video you will discover that after the death of the two little shepherd children, Jacinta and Francisco, it has been said that “they were in constant communication with her [Lucia] until the very end of her life.”

Communicating with the dead is referred to as “necromancy,” and is forbidden by God according to His Word! (Leviticus 19:31, 20:27) (Isaiah 8:19)

To accept the many teachings of the Catholic church concerning Mary — or anything that cannot be found anywhere in Scripture — is to go beyond what has been written, which is something that we are commanded not to do. (1 Corinthians 4:6) It is also adding to Scripture, as well as taking away from Scripture, which is something that God clearly forbids! (See Deut. 4:2, 12:32, Rev. 22:18)

When Mary is exalted to a position of power that is equal to or that surpasses that of Jesus Christ’s, (which sadly is often the case if one takes the time to compare the teachings of the Catholic church to Scripture, as I have been trying to do for you in these recent series that focuses on Catholicism), or when Jesus is presented to you as a baby, a child, or still on the cross, then you, dear Catholic, are being prevented from seeing the greatness of all that Jesus Christ alone has accomplished for you out of His love for you and out of His obedience to God the Father!

The foundation for our faith must be built upon Jesus Christ alone for our salvation, and it is not to be built upon any particular church or denomination.

“The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:22)

“So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed.” (Isaiah 28:16)

“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:11)

“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:19,20)

“As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner. And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. (1 Peter 2:2-8)

IN CLOSING:

While it is true that the Catholic church does not demand Catholics to accept these apparitions (that are classified as private revelations) in order to be Catholic, the fact that some of these apparitions have been fully approved by the Catholic church (some of which we will examine in an upcoming post) is enough to cause many Catholics to fall prey to the clearly unbiblical and spiritually deceptive messages that are given during these apparitions.

Dear Catholic, (and those of you who may be seeking after signs and wonders), please do not allow yourselves to be led astray from the simplicity of the Biblical gospel by apparitions and by Catholic traditions that are not based on Scripture, and yet are put on the same level as Scripture, as stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal.” Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own *”always, to the close of the age.” *(Matthew 28:20)

“Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit” “And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it abroad by their preaching.”

“As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”

(Para 80, 81, 82 Catechism of the Catholic Church) (Emphasis added to point out serious concerns).

Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father (John 14:6), His name is the only name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12), He is the only Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5), and He is the door (John 10:7-10) that leads to eternal life. And yet below you will read a quote that was taken from an interview with Lucia in Fatima in 1957 in which she stated that Mary is to be considered “as the certain door by which we are to enter heaven.”

Dear Catholic, and those of you who may have become captivated by these apparitions. Will you continue to believe the messages given during these apparitions that appeal to your emotions? Or after examining the evidence in light of Scripture will you make the decision to reject these apparitions and place your trust in Jesus Christ alone, who is the only Savior that God has provided for you? The choice is yours. I am praying for all of you.

Thank you very much for stopping by and taking time out of your busy day to read some of my posts and poems.

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

RELATED SCRIPTURES

“Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.”He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.” (Matthew 12:38-42)

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.” (John 4:48)

“The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there. and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:22-40)

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…” (Exodus 20:3-5)

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1)

RELATED VIDEOS

In spite of the fact that the following apparitions received full approval by the Catholic church because nothing contradicts their teachings, if tested against Scripture each one fails to line up with the truth of God’s Word:

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I added this video to show you what some of the teachings of Mormonism are because of the fact that Lucia claimed to have seen a vision in which God the Father had a body, which is one of the many unbiblical teachings of Mormonism.

It has been quite a while since I have presented you with a survey, and because it is the desire of my heart to reach precious Catholics with the truth according to God’s Word, the Bible, I am wondering if any of you who are Catholic are finding this present series helpful.

I am also wondering if those of you who are born-again, Bible believing Christians, and who may not have been aware of the teachings of the Catholic church, are finding this series helpful, as well, in order to help you better understand your dear Catholic friends and co-workers as you seek to help them come to know all that Jesus Christ accomplished for us:

1. Through His sinless life

2. Through His “once for all” sacrifice on the cross in our place that completely satisfied the wrath that God has towards mankind because of our sins and rebellion against Him, and

3. Through Jesus Christ’s glorious resurrection from the dead that clearly showed that God accepted His death as fully paying the debt of our sins and removing the barrier of sin that separates us from Him because He is completely Holy. One must, however, personally choose to place their faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone for their salvation, and not in their good works or in the sacramental system of the Catholic church to save them.

For those of you who may never have read any posts in this Catholicism series before, I just want you to know that once a month I take the reader through a portion of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and compare many of their teachings against Scriptures in a Catholic New Testament Bible in order to show Catholics and Christians alike, the extreme importance of testing the teachings of men against the truth of God’s Word so that they will not be deceived. I pray that you will consider looking into this series when time allows, and that many of you who have been reading through this series will consider taking part in the following survey which will only take a few moments of your time. You have a full week to participate in this survey; your ability to vote ends a week from today.

Thank you very much in advance!

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

RELATED SCRIPTURES

“He committed no sin; no one heard a lie come from his lips. When he was insulted he did not answer back with an insult; when he suffered he did not threaten, but placed his hopes in God, the righteous Judge. Christ himself carried our sins in his body to the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. You were like sheep that had lost their way; but now you have been brought back to follow the Shepherd and Keeper of your souls.” (1 Peter 2:22-25)

“For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved, through faith. It is not your own doing, but God’s gift. There is nothing here to boast of, since it is not the result of your own efforts. God is our Maker, and in our union with Christ Jesus he has created us for a life of good works, which he has already prepared for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

“Now we know that everything in the Law applies to those who live under the Law, in order to stop all human excuses and bring the whole world under God’s judgment. Because no man is put right in God’s sight by doing what the Law requires; what the Law does is to make man know that he has sinned. But now God’s way of putting men right with himself has been revealed, and it has nothing to do with the law. The Law and the prophets gave their witness to it: God puts men right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ, because there is no difference at all: all men have sinned and are far away from God’s saving presence. But by the free gift of God’s grace they are all put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free. God offered him so that by his death he should become the means by which men’s sins are forgiven, through their faith in him. God did this in order to demonstrate his righteousness. In the past he was patient and overlooked men’s sins; but now in the present time he deals with men’s sins, to demonstrate his righteousness. In this way God shows that he himself is righteous and that he puts right everyone who believes in Jesus. What, then, can we boast about? Nothing! And what is the reason for this? Is it that we obey the law? No, but that we believe. For we conclude that a man is put right with God only through faith, and not by doing what the law commands. Or is God only the God of the Jews? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Of course he is. God is one and he will put the Jews right with himself on the basis of their faith, and the Gentiles right through their faith. Does this mean that we do away with the Law by this faith? No, not at all; instead, we uphold the Law.” (Romans 3:19-31)

“Jesus, then, is the High Priest that meets our needs. He is holy; he has no fault or sin in him; he has been set apart from sinful men and raised above the heavens. He is not like other high priests; he does not need to offer sacrifices every day, for his own sins first, and then for the sins of the people. He offered one sacrifice, once and for all when he offered himself.” (Hebrews 7:26,27)

“Happy are those whose wrongs God has forgiven, whose sins he has covered over! Happy is the man whose sins the Lord will not keep account of!” (Romans 4:7,8)

“Jesus answered him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6)

“Jesus is the one of whom the scripture says, ‘The stone that you the builders despised turned out to be the most important stone.’ Salvation is to be found through him alone; for there is no one else in all the world, whose name God has given to men, by whom we can be saved.” (Acts 4:11,12)

“For there is one God, and there is one who brings God and men together, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself to redeem all men.” (1 Timothy 2:5,6)

“This, then, is the witness: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has this life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write you this so that you may know that you have eternal life–you that believe in the name of the Son of God.” (1 John 5:11-13)

All Scriptures taken from the Sacred Heart League Catholic New Testament

UPDATE: After crying out to God for His help concerning my computer problems, I came across some information on Wednesday that resolved all of the serious problems, and my computer has not crashed even once over the past three days, praise His name! Therefore, Lord willing, in March I am hoping to present to you:

1) A post concerning the many apparitions of the Virgin Mary in light of Scripture

As another year has come to an end, many of you may find yourselves disappointed because things did not work out as you had hoped and prayed that they would. Or you may be among the many who find yourself in the midst of an overwhelming trial that seems as if it will never come to an end. You may even feel as if you do not have the slightest bit of hope left and now you are spiraling down from just being discouraged to feeling as if you are sinking down in the depths of despair and into a deep depression. Sadly, this is what happens when our expectations are not met because we made the mistake of playing out certain scenarios in our minds on how we think God is going to do the things that we have prayed about. But we must choose to trust in God with all of our hearts and lean not on our own understanding; as Christians we must love God and live for Him regardless of what the outcome of our situations may be.

We must also come to the realization that because man has a free will, God will not violate man’s freedom in order to bring about an answer to our prayer. For example: I had prayed for many years that God would fill my “husband” with a godly sorrow for all that he had done and bring him to repentance and that he would believe the truth of the gospel that I had not only shared with him personally, but also through a very long letter that I had written to him, and through the truth of God’s Word in the Bible that I had given to him. I firmly believed that the day would come when he would believe the good news of the gospel and place his faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone for his salvation and that he would repent and return home. I believed that God would restore our marriage and use us both in ministry for His glory and to give hope to others who had problems in their marriage.And in spite of the fact that God hates divorce, God did not violate the choice that my “husband” made to file for divorce and to bring our marriage to an end.

Our God is a mighty God who is capable of doing the most amazing miracles, but we must never forget the part that man plays in the scheme of things. Therefore, when the battles continue to rage, when our hearts continue to break, when the tears once again fill our eyes, we must choose to continue to trust Him and praise Him in spite of what we see.

When circumstances attempt to steal our hope, we must then recognize that we have put our hope in the wrong place; our hope must be in God alone. It is He who is the lifter of our heads and the one who gives us His strength where we are weak and His peace that surpasses all human understanding. True joy comes from knowing God through placing one’s trust in what Jesus Christ did for all of us when He lived the perfect, sinless life that we could never live, died a horrendously painful death by crucifixion in our place for all our sins, and arose from the dead on the third day for our justification. No matter how dark and evil your deeds may be, if you choose to believe the truly good news that Jesus Christ died for you and receive this free gift of salvation He will be the one who will change your heart and renew your mind; you will be born-again and become a new creation in Christ. Your sins will be cast into the deepest sea never to be remembered again (Hebrews 10:4-14, Micah 7:19), and they will become as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).

So, dear reader, I will not say “Happy New Year” to you, because the happiness that the world speaks of depends on happenings which, as you well know, change from day to day. Instead, I pray that you will place your hope and trust in God and receive His love and forgiveness if you have not yet made the choice to do so. Life will still be hard and trials will come to test your faith to see if it is genuine or not, but I can assure you because of all that I have been through that His grace will be sufficient, His strength will be made perfect in your weakness, and His peace that surpasses all human understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus as you choose not to worry but choose instead to pray about everything. (Philippians 4:6,7)

And now to give you a glimpse, yet a rather detailed look, at what (Lord willing) I will be sharing with you on this blog in 2017:

I will be continuing to write more posts for the Catholicism series in which I am presently comparing many of the teachings that can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church with Scriptures in a Catholic New Testament Bible, trusting that God will use His Word to reveal the truly good news of the gospel to many precious Catholics. There will be many posts that will be written in this series in which the mystical aspects of Catholicism will clearly be shown to you (one of these posts is coming very soon), and you will, once again, not only realize the extreme importance and necessity of testing the teachings of men (and women) against the truth of God’s Word, but also you will realize how we must make the choice to believe God’s Word over the words of men.

When I am finally finished writing the Catholicism series, I will then begin writing another series in which the teachings of Calvinism/Reformed Theology — T.U.L.I.P. – Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints — will be compared to many Scriptures. These teachings have been weighing heavily on my mind over the past four years after learning about them by not only reading many articles written by Calvinists, but also by listening to many debates on the teachings of Reformed Theology/Calvinism as well as by listening to teachings and reading articles by former Calvinists and pastors who compare the teachings of Reformed Theology against Scripture. I will be sharing some of these teachings with you here, as well, when the time comes.

I have personally come to know a few Calvinists who have become very special to me, so I am also doing this series with them in mind, and in my prayers, and upon my heart.

In the beginning of this year I actually thought and prayed about writing and expressing my concerns about Calvinism at some point this year, but clearly I had no idea then just how long it was actually going to take me to write this series on Catholicism. Once I briefly mentioned my concerns about Calvinism when I replied to a comment that someone had made about it in my post about Matt Chandler (who is a Calvinist), and in many of my recent posts this year when I found it necessary to post a warning about a false teacher that was written by a Calvinist I made it clear to all of you that I do not adhere to the teachings of Reformed Theology, but I never went beyond that –until now.

Since I do not want to mislead anyone, and because I want to make it clear to all of you just how serious I am about this, and how deeply concerned I am (just like many other Christians are) about what Calvinism teaches because it distorts the very character and nature of God and the Word of God, I just deleted one of the more popular posts that I wrote back in March of 2014 entitled, IS YOUR PASTOR A SHEPHERD OR A WOLF – WOLVES IN THE PULPIT. In this post I shared Tom Pennington’s message, as well as Phil Johnson’s message from the 2014 Shepherd’s Conference. I originally shared their messages because I was still deeply troubled due to the fact that my former pastor for 14 1/2 years — James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel, Rolling Meadows — made the decision to place Steven Furtick and Mark Driscoll in the pulpit while I was still attending there. Even though I thought Phil Johnson and Tom Pennington’s messages were good at the time that I posted them, I now realize that I cannot keep their messages on my blog and still claim to be deeply concerned about what Reformed Theology/Calvinism teaches. At the point in time when I shared that post with all of you I was not fully aware of all that Calvinism teaches. Since I am much more informed now after doing so much research on Calvinism I did not even hesitate for a moment before deleting that post. When time allows, I will be going over all of my previous posts and either deleting other things that I have posted, or I will at least be adding warnings if for some reason I see the need to keep something that was done by a Calvinist.

The one thing that comes to mind that I would like to keep on my blog is the video that Calvinist, James White did in which he analyzed everything that Modalist and Word of Faith teacher, T D Jakes had said when he took part in the Elephant Room II Conference in January of 2012. Christians need to hear what went on that night during that Conference and realize that T D Jakes did not embrace the doctrine of the Trinity as those in attendance that night were led to believe, and James White made that abundantly clear in his video. However, if I come across something equally as good that was written or recorded by a pastor or teacher who is not a Calvinist I will delete James White’s video and replace it with what I find. Okay, I am beginning to ramble, so I need to get back on track:

Unbeknownst to those who read this blog, as I seriously thought and prayed about addressing the teachings of Calvinism on my blog I was actually contacted by three different people who requested that I write about it. What they shared with me will remain confidential, but I will simply say that God used them to strongly confirm to me that this is something I need to write about.

I will now admit to you that one reason why it is taking me so long to write the Catholicism series is because my concern about Calvinism is equally as strong as it is about Catholicism. Therefore, I sometimes find myself doing research on Calvinism when I should actually be writing the next post in the Catholicism series. But with God’s help I will be more focused in 2017 and I will choose to concentrate on writing what I need to share with you about Catholicism first before I do any more research on Calvinism.

When I do begin the series on Calvinism, I promise to be Christlike in how I present this information to you, and I will not bash any Reformed/Calvinist pastor or teacher as I present this information to you. I will also ask those of you who will choose to make a comment on any of these posts in this upcoming series to respectfully do the same, no matter what side of this issue you presently stand on.

One of the things that I will be doing in order to prepare to write this series on Calvinism is that I will be listening to all of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion which I found recorded on YouTube, and I will then compare John Calvin’s comments against Scripture and present them all to you.

For those of you who have subscribed to this blog and consider yourselves to be Reformed/Calvinists, I realize that some of you may now decide to unsubscribe to this blog after reading some of what I will be sharing here in 2017. However, I truly hope and pray that you will at least consider reading what I have to share here when the time comes. After all, if you truly love Jesus Christ — and I believe that you do — I know that the desire of your heart is to walk in truth as God’s Word shows us that we are to do:

“I rejoiced greatly that I found of thy children walking in truth, as we have received a commandment from the Father.” (2 John 1:4)

“For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (3 John 1:4)

Will you be willing to test the teachings of Calvinism and the teachings of your favorite teacher on the subject against Scripture as God shows us in His Word that we are to do?I pray that you will.

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)

In this series I will also be presenting posts to you in which former Calvinists will be sharing their testimonies. Two people have already agreed to share their stories here with all of you.

You will also be reading a post that will originally be written by someone who has a loved one who is presently deeply involved in Calvinism. By reading what this person is willing to share with all of you, my prayer is that many of you will then come to realize how the teachings of Calvinism distorts one’s thoughts about God and Biblical Christianity.

If you are a former Calvinist and you are interested in sharing your story here, please contact me using the Contact Form and I will consider sharing your story here, as well, as long as you are a born-again Christian and not an Arminian…Arminianism is based on some theological ideas of Jacobus Arminius who was a Dutch Reformed theologian. Like I have said in many of my posts, as Christians we are to be followers of Jesus Christ alone; we are not to be followers of any man (or woman) and their ministry.

In the coming year I will also be presenting teachings to you on Reformed Theology by pastors who have compared these teachings against Scripture and have found them to be very troubling.

Recently I heard Pastor Chris Quintana of Calvary Chapel Cypress announce that he will be having George Bryson speaking on Calvinism in March. George Bryson has written books on Calvinism such as, THE FIVE POINTS OF CALVINISM: WEIGHED AND FOUND WANTING and THE DARK SIDE OF CALVINISM. If this presentation by George Bryson will be live streamed I will (Lord willing) share it with you here, as well.

A good suggestion was given to me way back in June of this year by a reader of this blog in which he stated in his comment that I should consider putting together a page or a post which lists some of the videos that I believe to be the most important or helpful. So Alec, thank you very much again for that very good suggestion! Lord willing, that post will be coming in January or February. I am so sorry that it is taking me so long to actually getting around to putting it together!

I will also be writing some posts to show the importance of praying for discernment –even while listening to so-called Christian songs!

As always, I will continue to challenge all of you in my posts to test everything that you read and listen to against Scripture so that you will never be deceived by the many pastors and teachers who are encouraging Christians to have experiences with God or telling them to look for truth outside of the pages of God’s Word.

Truly we are living at a time when Jesus Christ could return at any moment! Maybe even before the first day of this New Year comes to an end! If so, would you be ready? Is your faith in what Jesus Christ has already done for you? Or are you trusting that your good works will be the evidence that will grant you eternal life? Do not be deceived!

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

“Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” (John 6:28,29)

Thank you to those of you who have taken time out of your busy days over this past year to stop by here to read some of my posts and poems. I appreciate all of you very much!

Thank you also to those of you who took the time to leave your comments and words of wisdom, as well as your words of appreciation and encouragement. I can never thank you enough!

God bless each and every one of you in 2017 with His wisdom, His discernment, and His grace.

SERIES INTRODUCTION

There are two very important reasons why I felt compelled to write this series of posts, and I’d like to briefly share these reasons with you now before I go any further:

1) Since I am a former Catholic who is very aware of the teachings of the Catholic Church because I attended twelve years of Catholic school, attended Catechism classes, made my First Holy Communion, was Confirmed, and faithfully attended Mass not only every Sunday for many years, but also before school began for three years (as required by the school that I attended at the time), and who came to the knowledge of who Jesus Christ truly is and what He actually accomplished for us by reading a Catholic New Testament Bibleexactly like the one pictured above, I decided to write this series with the hope of reaching Catholics so that they can not only come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ truly is as His Word, the Bible, declares Him to be, but also so they can see by reading God’s Word that they can have complete forgiveness, lasting joy, true peace, and the assurance of salvation if they choose to believe God’s Word and place their trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. Also, since many Catholics do not realize everything that the Catholic church actually teaches (as I once did not realize until after doing research and reading the CCC), I thought that it was extremely important to share this information to make Catholics aware of many things that are quite disturbing, as you will all soon become aware of as this series continues.

2) This series of posts is also being written with the intention of helping those of you who are born-again, Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ who have no idea of what the teachings of Catholicism are so that you can become aware of their teachings and be prepared to offer hope and assurance of salvation through Jesus Christ to Catholics based solely upon the truth that is recorded in God’s Word.

As we continue on in this series together comparing Scriptures in the Catholic New Testament to teachings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we must keep these important thoughts in mind:

When it comes to our eternal destination — heaven or hell — we must be certain that we place our trust in solid truth and not in speculation or in the traditions of men. The Catholic church claims to be the “one true Church.” Therefore, it stands to reason that their teachings must line up with God’s Word and not contradict it since God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8), and His Word stands firm forever. (Psalm 119:89, Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24,25) If a contradiction is found it must be rejected because God’s Word is our plumb line by which we must measure (or test) the teachings of every religion to see if it lines up or not. If it is off in one point we can be certain that it will lead us further and further away from Biblical truth and lead us into spiritual deception.

This series will cover many different subjects ranging from what does the Catholic Church teach about the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, priests, the pope, sin, forgiveness of sins, salvation, prayer, and what must a Catholic believe in order to receive eternal life. Some of these teachings will shock even many Catholics when they learn what their church actually teaches!

Lord willing, I hope to share at least one post every month with you in this new series until I have covered all the most important teachings that need to be brought to your attention. The main goal that I have in writing this series is to present the Word of God to Catholics — and to every person — in order to point everyone to Jesus Christ, who is our only hope and ‘the only name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved.’ (Acts 4:12)

Dear Catholic, please take a minute now to pray, asking God to open your mind to the Scriptures and to reveal the truth to you –whatever that may be.

Because only God can reveal the truth to you, I will refrain from making any comments unless I find it completely necessary. Since God’s Word is truth I trust that He will not only give you eyes to see the truth, but also I trust that He will give you the courage to respond to His leading. However, each one of you will find yourself having to answer this question when you come to many points that I present to you in these posts after realizing that there are oftentimes extreme differences between what the Word of God says and what Catholicism teaches, and the question that you will have to answer is:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Please keep in mind, as you are carefully reading all of the statements made from the following Catholic sources, that every time you see the word “church” spelled with a capital c they are referring to the Catholic church, since they believe that the “Catholic Church” alone is the “one true Church.”All of the information that I will be sharing with you I have obtained from the following sources:

1) CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (pictured above) – Imprimi Potest – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) – Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church

2) THE WORD OF GOD – THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR IN TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION – SACRED HEART LEAGUE EDITION – IMPRIMATUR JOHN FRANCIS WHEALON, ARCHBISHOP OF HARTFORD, APRIL 15, 1971 SIGNED AND SEALED BY BISHOP JOSEPH B. BRUNINI, DIOCESE OF JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

3) Occasionally when I share a Scripture with you from the Sacred Heart League (SHL) Catholic New Testament and notice that it lacks depth and clarity, I will then follow it with the same verse but in the King James Version in order to give you a better understanding of what is being said, and so that you can see what is missing from the SHL translation.

4) Very briefly in this series, I will also be quoting from THE CATHOLIC DOUAY RHEIMS VERSION OF THE BIBLE – in which you will find the following statements:

“EXCERPT FROM ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR HOLY FATHER BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE:

“The God of all Providence, Who in the adorable designs of His love at first elevated the human race to the participation of the Divine nature, and afterwards delivered it from the universal guilt and ruin, restoring it to its primitive dignity, has in consequence bestowed upon man a splendid gift and safeguard–making known to him, by supernatural means, the hidden Mysteries of His divinity, His wisdom, and His mercy. For although in Divine revelations there are contained some things which are not beyond the reach of unassisted reason, and which are made the objects of such revelation in order “that all may come to know them with facility, certainty, and safety from error, yet not on this account can supernatural Revelation be said to be absolutely necessary; it is only necessary because God has ordained man to a supernatural end.” This supernatural revelation according to the belief of the universal Church, is contained both in unwritten Tradition, and in written Books, which are therefore called sacred and canonical because, “being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the Church.” (Page ix)

“Wherefore it must be recognised that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide; God so disposing, as the Holy Fathers commonly teach, in order that men may investigate them with greater ardour and earnestness, and that what is attained with difficulty may sink more deeply into the mind and heart; and, most of all that they may understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and their teacher. St. Irenaeus long since laid down, that where the charismata of God were, there the truth was to be learnt, and that Holy Scripture was safely interpreted by those who had the Apostolic succession. His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in the renewing of the decree of Trent, declares its “mind” to be this–that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (Page xvii)

“Wherefore the first and dearest object of the Catholic commentator should be to interpret those passages which have received an authentic interpretation either by the sacred writers themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (as in many places of the New Testament), or from the Church, under the assistance of the same Holy Spirit, whether by her solemn judgment or her ordinary and universal magisterium –to interpret those passages in that identical sense, and to prove, by all the resources of science that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation. In the other passages, the analogy of faith should be followed, and Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law; for seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.” (Page xviii)

“For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should nevertheless, bear well in mind–as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages –that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture and never attain its pith.” (Page xix)

INTRODUCTION TO PART 5

As I have tried to point out to you through the information that I have shared with you in each post in this series, Catholicism presents some extremely troubling and unbiblical teachings to their people, which also includes those who take part in their Catechism classes. In this post, however, as we begin going through the next section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we will be looking at some of their teachings that clearly line up with Scripture.

At some point in this series (probably closer to the end) I will be presenting you with a post in which I will be comparing some of Catholicism’s teachings with some of their other teachings in order to point out their inconsistencies, as well as the contradictions and the unbiblical nature of some of their teachings. I was considering doing that every time that a problematic teaching came up as I am continuing to go through the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) with you, but I decided that doing it that way may be too disruptive for you, the reader. What I will do from now on is put a bright pink asterisk (*) next to not only a problematic teaching, but also next to one that is clearly Biblical, and yet as you will soon see as we continue in this series, sadly, many of the teachings of the Catholic Church end up nullifying the Word of God. It will be these teachings that I will emphasize and bring to your attention at a later time, backing up everything with Scripture so that you can clearly see the truth with your own eyes. Towards the end of this post I will, however, be bringing your attention to two teachings that veer Catholics away from solid Biblical truth.

Dear Catholic, please take a moment to pray now and ask God to show you the truth according to what His Word says.

Now lets begin PART 5 of this series:

THE PROFESSION OF FAITH

ARTICLE 4

“JESUS CHRIST SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE, WAS CRUCIFIED, DIED, AND WAS BURIED”

“The Paschal mystery of Christ’s cross and Resurrection stands at the center of the Good News that the apostles, and the Church following them, are to proclaim to the world. *God’s saving plan was accomplished “once for all” by the redemptive death of his Son, Jesus Christ.” (Para 571)

“In Jesus, the same Word of God, that had resounded on Mount Sinai to give the written Law to Moses, made itself anew on the Mount of the Beatitudes. Jesus did not abolish the Law but fulfilled it by giving its ultimate interpretation in a divine way: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old…But I say to you…” *With this same divine authority, he disavowed certain human traditions of the Pharisees that were making “void the word of God.” (Para 581)

PARAGRAPH 2. JESUS DIED CRUCIFIED

Jews are not collectively responsible for Jesus’ death

“The historical complexity of Jesus’ trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sins of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles’ calls to conversion after Pentecost. Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept “the ignorance” of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders. Still less can we extend responsibility to other Jews of different times and places, based merely on the crowds cry: “His blood be on us and on our children!” a formula for ratifying a judicial sentence. As the Church declared at the Second Vatican Council: …[N]either all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his Passion…[T]he Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture.” (Para 597)

All sinners were the authors of Christ’s Passion

“In her Magisterial teaching of the faith and in the witness of her saints, the Church has never forgotten that “sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured.” Taking into account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself, the Church does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone.” (Para 598)

II. CHRIST’S REDEMPTIVE DEATH IN GOD’S PLAN OF SALVATION

“Jesus handed over according to the definitive plan of God”

“Jesus’ violent death was not the result of chance in an unfortunate coincidence of circumstances, but is part of the mystery of God’s plan, as St. Peter explains to the Jews of Jerusalem in his first sermon on Pentecost: “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” This Biblical language does not mean that those who handed him over were merely passive players in a scenario written in advance by God.” (Para 599)

“To God all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination,” he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace. “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.” (Para 600)

“He died for our sins according to the Scriptures”

“The Scriptures had foretold this divine plan of salvation through the putting to death of “the righteous one, my servant” as a mystery of universal redemption, that is, as the ransom that would free men from the slavery of sin. Citing a confession of faith that he himself had “received,” St. Paul professes that “Christ died for our sins according with the scriptures.” In particular Jesus’ redemptive death fulfills Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering Servant. Indeed Jesus himself explained the meaning of his life and death in the light of God’s suffering Servant. After his resurrection he gave this interpretation of the Scriptures to the disciples at Emmaus, and then to the apostles.” (Para 601)

“Jesus did not experience reprobation as if he himself had sinned. But in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Having thus established him in solidarity with us sinners, God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” so that we might be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” (Para 603)

God takes the initiative of universal redeeming love

“By giving up his own Son for our sins, God manifests that his plan for us is one of benevolent love, prior to any merit on our part: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) God “shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) (Para 604)

“At the end of the parable of the lost sheep Jesus recalled that God’s love excludes no one: “So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” He affirms that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many; this last term is not restrictive, but contrasts the whole of humanity with the unique person of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us.” The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: “There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.” (Para 605)

CHRIST OFFERED HIMSELF TO HIS FATHER FOR OUR SINS

Christ’s whole life is an offering to the Father

“The Son of God who came down “from heaven, not to do [his] own will, but the will of him who sent [him],” said on coming into the world, “Lo, I have come to do your will, O God.” *And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.” (Hebrews 10:5-10) From the first moment of his Incarnation the Son embraces the Father’s plan of divine salvation in his redemptive mission: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” The sacrifice of Jesus “for the sins of the whole world” expresses his loving communion with the Father. “The Father loves me, because I lay down my life,” says the Lord, “[for] I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” (John 10:17) (Para 606)

“The desire to embrace his Father’s plan of redeeming love inspired Jesus’ whole life, for his redemptive passion was the very reason for his Incarnation. And so he asked, “And what shall I say? ‘Father save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour.” And again, “Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?” From the cross, just before “It is finished,” he said, “I thirst.” (Para 607)

“The Lamb who takes away the sins of the world”

“After agreeing to baptize him along with the sinners, John the Baptist looked at Jesus and pointed him out as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” By doing so, he reveals that Jesus is at the same time the suffering Servant who silently allows himself to be led to the slaughter and who bears the sin of the multitudes, and also the Paschal Lamb, the symbol of Israel’s redemption at the first Passover. Christ’s whole life expresses his mission: “to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)(Para 608)

Jesus freely embraces the Father’s redeeming love

“In suffering and death his humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men. Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to save, Jesus freely accepted his Passion and death: *“No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:18) Hence the sovereign freedom of God’s Son as he went out to his death.” (Para 609)

NOTE: Up to this point many of you will probably agree that for the most part, these teachings in this section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church line up with Scripture by stating that:

Jesus’ sacrifice is a “once for all” sacrifice

Jesus’ redemptive death fulfills the prophecy in Isaiah 53

As sinners, we are all responsible for Jesus Christ’s death

Jesus willingly gave His life for us

However, in this next section in Para 611 this is where some serious problems begin to emerge:

“At the Last Supper Jesus anticipated the free offering of his life”

“Jesus gave the supreme expression of his free offering of himself at the meal shared with the twelve Apostles “on the night he was betrayed.” On the eve of his Passion, while still free, Jesus transformed this Last Supper with the apostles into the memorial of his voluntary offering to the Father for the salvation of men: “This is my body which is given for you.” This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:20) (Para 610)

*“The Eucharist that Christ institutes at that moment will be the memorial of his sacrifice. Jesus includes the apostles in his own offering and bids them perpetuate it. By doing so, the Lord institutes his apostles as priests of the New Covenant. “For their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.” (John 17:19) (Para 611)

NOTE: We will be taking a thorough look into Catholicism’s teachings concerning the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Mass at a later time in this series, but I would just like to stop for a moment to ask any Catholic who may be reading this just one question:

Dear Catholic, since Catholicism teaches that the apostles were commanded to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Mass, will you prayerfully consider taking some time to read through the Book of Acts in the Bible which records the beginning of the church? Look to see if you can find at least one time in which the apostles declare this time of reflecting on the Lord’s death as being a time of sacrifice “in reparation for sins of the living and the dead…” as the Catholic Church teaches in Para 1414, instead of it being just a time of “proclaiming His death until He comes again,” as it says in 1 Corinthians 11:26.

This is what Para 1414 in the CCC says which, by doing so, renders Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross as being insufficient to pay the debt for our sins in full:

“As sacrifice, the Eucharist is offered in reparation for the sins of the living and the dead and to obtain spiritual or temporal benefits from God.”

God’s Word clearly says otherwise:

“God offered him so that by his death he should become the means by which men’s sins are forgiven, through their faith in him. God did this in order to demonstrate his righteousness. In the past, he was patient and overlooked men’s sins; but now in the present time he deals with men’s sins, to demonstrate his righteousness. In this way God shows that he himself is righteous and that he puts right everyone who believes in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25,26) (SHLCNT)

“He was given over to die because of our sins, and was raised to life to put us right with God.” (Romans 4:25) SHLCNT

“You were at one time spiritually dead because of your sins, and because you were Gentiles without the Law. But God has now brought you to life with Christ; God forgave us all our sins. He cancelled the unfavorable record of our debts, with its binding rules, and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross. And on that cross Christ freed himself from the power of the spiritual rulers and authorities; he made a public spectacle of them by leading them as captives in his victory procession.” (Colossians 2:13-15) SHLCNT

Now let’s continue on with some more teachings that can be found in this section of the CCC that are Biblical because they line up with Scripture:

Jesus substitutes his obedience for our disobedience

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin” when “he bore the sins of many,” and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous,” for “he shall bear their iniquities.” Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.”

Jesus consummates his sacrifice on the Cross

“It is love “to the end” that confers on Christ’s sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction. He knew and loved us all when he offered his life. Now “the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.” (2 Corin. 5:14) No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.” (Para 616)

These next two teachings are rather troubling:

Teaching #1

“The Council of Trent emphasizes the unique character of Christ’s sacrifice as “the source of eternal salvation” and teaches that “his most holy Passion on the wood of the cross merited justification for us.” And the Church venerates his cross as it sings: “Hail, O Cross, our only hope.” (Para 617)

On September 14th the Catholic Church has a feast day set aside to venerate the cross. In the following video starting at the 26:55 minute mark, Catholic priest, John Corapi closes this video by saying many unbiblical things concerning human suffering:

“Listen, we’re baptized, we’re in Christ. And so through Him, with Him, and in Him, every beat of our heart, every word we speak, every step we walk through life has redemptive signification. Every little pain…all the physical problems…all the emotional distress you can have throughout the course of a life walking through this valley of tears, all that’s powerful in union with Jesus. Now apart from Jesus, it’s not valuable. Apart from Jesus it’s just evil. But through Jesus, and with Jesus, and in Jesus, it’s powerful. We, as it were, participate in redemption…we participate in the paschal mystery. We contribute to the salvation of our brothers and sisters through this redemptive love.”

“It’s kind of a divine alchemy. That base metal of evil — human suffering — is transformed through the power of love into the pure gold of redemptive suffering. Now think about this…this is huge…especially for those of us who are getting older…we may be saddened by the fact that we can’t do things like we used to…we can’t see or hear like we used to. Our human powers are diminishing as it were. Well, remember this in the face of all of that…you are becoming more and more conformed to Jesus, and Him crucified, and thus bringing down grace on your brothers and sisters; you’re contributing to their salvation through this redemptive sacrifice.”

Teaching #2

Our participation in Christ’s sacrifice

“The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the “one mediator between God and men.” (1 Tim. 2:5) But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man, the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” is offered to all men. He calls his disciples to take up [their] cross and follow [him],” for “Christ also suffered for [us], leaving [us] an example so that [we] should follow in his steps.” In fact Jesus desires to associate with his redeeming sacrifice those who were to be its first beneficiaries. *This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering.” (Para 618)

Catholicism does have many teachings that line up with Scripture. However, as you have seen from the two teachings directly above, sadly, many of them — in one way or another — directs every precious Catholic’s attention away from the finished work of Jesus Christ’s once for all sacrifice on the cross either to something that must be added to what Jesus Christ has already fully accomplished for us, as if what He did wasn’t enough, or the attention of precious Catholics is somehow directed away from Jesus Christ and on to Mary. As we continue through this series, these sad truths will become very clear to you.

Let’s continue:

“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3) (Para 619)

“Our salvation flows from God’s initiative of love for us, because “he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). (Para 620)

*“Jesus freely offered himself for our salvation. Beforehand, during the Last Supper, he both symbolized this offering and *made it really present: “This is my body which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). (Para 621) NOTE: Lord willing, I will be going into great detail concerning this very troubling teaching when we get further into this series.

Paragraph 3. Jesus Christ Was Buried

“By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one.” In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins” (1 Corin. 15:3) but should also “taste death,” experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell. It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb, reveals God’s great sabbath rest after the fulfillment of man’s salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe.” (Para 624)

“You will not let your Holy One see corruption”

“Christ’s death was a real death in that it put an end to his earthly human existence. But because of the union which the person of the Son retained with his body, his was not a mortal corpse like others, for “it was not possible for death to hold him” and therefore “divine powers preserved Christ’s body from corruption.” Both of these statements can be said of Christ: “He was cut off out of the land of the living,” and “My flesh will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption.” Jesus’ Resurrection “on the third day” was the sign of this, also because bodily decay was held to begin on the fourth day after death.” (Para 627)

Article 5

*“HE DESCENDED INTO HELL. ON THE THIRD DAY HE ROSE AGAIN”

Paragraph 1. Christ Descended into Hell

“This was the first meaning given to the apostolic preaching to Christ’s descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there. (1 Peter 3:18,19) (Para 632)

“Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.” (Para 633)

Paragraph 2. On the Third Day He Rose from the Dead

“We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this day he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus.” (Acts 13:32,33) The Resurrection of Jesus is the crowning truth of our faith in Christ, a faith believed and lived as the central truth by the first Christian community; handed on as fundamental by Tradition; established by the documents of the New Testament; and preached as an essential part of the Paschal mystery along with the cross: Christ is risen from the dead! Dying he conquered death; to the dead he has given life.” (Byzantine Liturgy, Troparion of Easter) (Para 638)

I. THE HISTORICAL AND TRANSCENDENT EVENT

The empty tomb

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” The first element we encounter in the framework of the Easter events is the empty tomb. In itself it is not a direct proof of Resurrection; the absence of Christ’s body from the tomb could be explained otherwise. Nonetheless the empty tomb was still an essential sign for all. Its discovery by the disciples was the first step towards recognizing the very fact of the Resurrection. This was the case, first with the holy women, and then with Peter. The disciple “whom Jesus loved” affirmed that when he entered the empty tomb and discovered “the linen cloths lying there,” he saw and believed.” This suggests that he realized from the empty tomb’s condition that the absence of Jesus’ body could not have been of human doing and that Jesus had not simply returned to earthly life as had been the case with Lazarus.” (Para 640)

The condition of Christ’s risen humanity

“By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognize that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his passion. Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ’s humanity can no longer be confined to earth and belongs henceforth only to the Father’s divine realm.” (Matt. 28:9, 16,17, Luke 24:15,36, Jn. 20:14,17,19,26; 21:4) (Para 645)

II. THE RESURRECTION — A WORK OF THE HOLY TRINITY

“Christ’s Resurrection is an object of faith in that it is a transcendent intervention of God himself in creation and history. In it the three divine persons act together as one, and manifest their own proper characteristics. The Father’s power “raised up” Christ his Son and by doing so perfectly introduced his Son’s humanity, including his body, into the Trinity. Jesus is conclusively revealed as “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead.” St. Paul insists on the manifestation of God’s power through the working of the Spirit who gave life to Jesus’ dead humanity and called it to the glorious state of Lordship.” (Para 648)

“As for the Son, he effects his own Resurrection by virtue of his divine power. Jesus announces that the Son of man will have to suffer much, die, and then rise. Elsewhere he affirms explicitly: “I lay down my life, that I may take it again…I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” “We believe that Jesus died and rose again.” (Para 649)

III. THE MEANING AND SAVING SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESURRECTION

“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Corin. 15:14) The Resurrection above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and teachings. All truths, even those most inaccessible to human reason, find their justification if Christ by his Resurrection has given the definitive proof of his divine authority, which he had promised. (651)

“Christ’s Resurrection is the fulfillment of the promises both of the Old Testament and of Jesus himself during his earthly life. The phrase “in accordance with the Scriptures” indicates that Christ’s Resurrection fulfilled these predictions.” (Para 652)

“The truth of Jesus’ divinity is confirmed by his Resurrection. He had said: “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he.” The Resurrection of the crucified one shows that he was truly “I Am,” the Son of God and God himself. So St. Paul could declare to the Jews: “What God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’ Christ’s Resurrection is closely linked to the Incarnation of God’s Son and is its fulfillment in accordance with God’s eternal plan.” (John 8:28) (Para 653)

“Finally, Christ’s Resurrection–and the risen Christ himself–is the principle and source of our future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep…For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)(Para 655)

SOME CLOSING THOUGHTS:

As you have seen throughout most of this post, there are many teachings in Catholicism that absolutely do line up with Biblical Christianity. However, as we continue on in this series you will come to realize even more just what happens to Biblical truth when it becomes mixed with the “Traditions of men.” I capitalized “traditions” intentionally, because as I have shared with you in thefirst post in this series, the Catholic Church puts their traditions on the same level of authority as the Word of God:

“Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other.”(Para 80)

“Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” (Para 82)

And as you will see by reading the Scriptures further below, God is very clear in His Word about what He thinks concerning the mixing of His truth with the traditions of men.

Dear Catholic, maybe at this point you still do not see anything to be concerned about in the information that I have shared with you. But if you will please consider checking back here from time to time, I will be sharing some more teachings of the Catholic church in upcoming posts concerning things that you are probably not even aware of…teachings that you may find very disturbing and hard to believe at first. Until then, please prayerfully consider reading through the Gospel of John and the Book of Romans in the Bible, and ask God to open your mind to the truth of His Word so that you will see what the real truth is for yourself. Your eternal destiny is truly at stake.

Thank you very much for stopping by and taking time out of your busy day to read some of my posts and poems.

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

RELATED SCRIPTURES

“This is how you disregard God’s word to follow your own teaching. You hypocrites! How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you! ‘These people, says God, honor me with their words, but their heart is really far away from me. It is no use for them to worship me, because they teach man-made commandments as though they were God’s rules!’ ” (Matthew 15:6-9) Sacred Heart League Catholic New Testament (SHLCNT)

“Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:6-9) (KJV)

“See to it, then, that no one makes a captive of you with the worthless deceit of human wisdom, which comes from the teachings handed down by men, and from the ruling spirits of the universe, and not from Christ.” (Colossians 2:8) (SHLCNT)

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)(KJV)

“Preach the message, insist upon telling it, whether the time is right or not; to convince, reproach, and encourage, teaching with all patience. The time will come when men will not listen to the true teaching, but will follow their own desires, and will collect for themselves more and more teachers who will tell them what they are itching to hear. They will turn away from listening to the truth and give their attention to legends.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4) (SHLCNT)

“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4) (KJV)

SERIES INTRODUCTION

There are two very important reasons why I felt compelled to write this series of posts, and I’d like to briefly share these reasons with you now before I go any further:

1) Since I am a former Catholic who is very aware of the teachings of the Catholic Church because I attended twelve years of Catholic school, attended Catechism classes, made my First Holy Communion, was Confirmed, and faithfully attended Mass not only every Sunday for many years, but also before school began for three years (as required by the school that I attended at the time), and who came to the knowledge of who Jesus Christ truly is and what He actually accomplished for us by reading a Catholic New Testament Bibleexactly like the one pictured above, I decided to write this series with the hope of reaching Catholics so that they can not only come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ truly is as His Word, the Bible, declares Him to be, but also so they can see by reading God’s Word that they can have complete forgiveness, lasting joy, true peace, and the assurance of salvation if they choose to believe God’s Word and place their trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. Also, since many Catholics do not realize everything that the Catholic church actually teaches (as I once did not realize until after doing research and reading the CCC), I thought that it was extremely important to share this information to make Catholics aware of many things that are quite disturbing, as you will all soon become aware of as this series continues.

2) This series of posts is also being written with the intention of helping those of you who are born-again, Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ who have no idea of what the teachings of Catholicism are so that you can become aware of their teachings and be prepared to offer hope and assurance of salvation through Jesus Christ to Catholics based solely upon the truth that is recorded in God’s Word.

As we continue on in this series together comparing Scriptures in the Catholic New Testament to teachings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we must keep these important thoughts in mind:

When it comes to our eternal destination — heaven or hell — we must be certain that we place our trust in solid truth and not in speculation or in the traditions of men. The Catholic church claims to be the “one true Church.” Therefore, it stands to reason that their teachings must line up with God’s Word and not contradict it since God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8), and His Word stands firm forever. (Psalm 119:89, Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24,25) If a contradiction is found it must be rejected because God’s Word is our plumb line by which we must measure (or test) the teachings of every religion to see if it lines up or not. If it is off in one point we can be certain that it will lead us further and further away from Biblical truth and lead us into spiritual deception.

This series will cover many different subjects ranging from what does the Catholic Church teach about the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, priests, the pope, sin, forgiveness of sins, salvation, prayer, and what must a Catholic believe in order to receive eternal life. Some of these teachings will shock even many Catholics when they learn what their church actually teaches!

Lord willing, I hope to share at least one post every month with you in this new series until I have covered all the most important teachings that need to be brought to your attention. The main goal that I have in writing this series is to present the Word of God to Catholics — and to every person — in order to point everyone to Jesus Christ, who is our only hope and ‘the only name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved.’ (Acts 4:12)

Dear Catholic, please take a minute now to pray, asking God to open your mind to the Scriptures and to reveal the truth to you –whatever that may be.

Because only God can reveal the truth to you, I will refrain from making any comments unless I find it completely necessary. Since God’s Word is truth I trust that He will not only give you eyes to see the truth, but also I trust that He will give you the courage to respond to His leading. However, each one of you will find yourself having to answer this question when you come to many points that I present to you in these posts after realizing that there are oftentimes extreme differences between what the Word of God says and what Catholicism teaches, and the question that you will have to answer is:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Please keep in mind, as you are carefully reading all of the statements made from the following Catholic sources, that every time you see the word “church” spelled with a capital c they are referring to the Catholic church, since they believe that the “Catholic Church” alone is the “one true Church.”All of the information that I will be sharing with you I have obtained from the following sources:

1) CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (pictured above) – Imprimi Potest – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) – Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church

2) THE WORD OF GOD – THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR IN TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION – SACRED HEART LEAGUE EDITION – IMPRIMATUR JOHN FRANCIS WHEALON, ARCHBISHOP OF HARTFORD, APRIL 15, 1971 SIGNED AND SEALED BY BISHOP JOSEPH B. BRUNINI, DIOCESE OF JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

3) Occasionally when I share a Scripture with you from the Sacred Heart League (SHL) Catholic New Testament and notice that it lacks depth and clarity, I will then follow it with the same verse but in the King James Version in order to give you a better understanding of what is being said, and so that you can see what is missing from the SHL translation.

4) Very briefly in this series, I will also be quoting from THE CATHOLIC DOUAY RHEIMS VERSION OF THE BIBLE – in which you will find the following statements:

“EXCERPT FROM ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR HOLY FATHER BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE:

“The God of all Providence, Who in the adorable designs of His love at first elevated the human race to the participation of the Divine nature, and afterwards delivered it from the universal guilt and ruin, restoring it to its primitive dignity, has in consequence bestowed upon man a splendid gift and safeguard–making known to him, by supernatural means, the hidden Mysteries of His divinity, His wisdom, and His mercy. For although in Divine revelations there are contained some things which are not beyond the reach of unassisted reason, and which are made the objects of such revelation in order “that all may come to know them with facility, certainty, and safety from error, yet not on this account can supernatural Revelation be said to be absolutely necessary; it is only necessary because God has ordained man to a supernatural end.” This supernatural revelation according to the belief of the universal Church, is contained both in unwritten Tradition, and in written Books, which are therefore called sacred and canonical because, “being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the Church.” (Page ix)

“Wherefore it must be recognised that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide; God so disposing, as the Holy Fathers commonly teach, in order that men may investigate them with greater ardour and earnestness, and that what is attained with difficulty may sink more deeply into the mind and heart; and, most of all that they may understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and their teacher. St. Irenaeus long since laid down, that where the charismata of God were, there the truth was to be learnt, and that Holy Scripture was safely interpreted by those who had the Apostolic succession. His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in the renewing of the decree of Trent, declares its “mind” to be this–that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (Page xvii)

“Wherefore the first and dearest object of the Catholic commentator should be to interpret those passages which have received an authentic interpretation either by the sacred writers themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (as in many places of the New Testament), or from the Church, under the assistance of the same Holy Spirit, whether by her solemn judgment or her ordinary and universal magisterium –to interpret those passages in that identical sense, and to prove, by all the resources of science that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation. In the other passages, the analogy of faith should be followed, and Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law; for seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.” (Page xviii)

“For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should nevertheless, bear well in mind–as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages –that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture and never attain its pith.” (Page xix)

INTRODUCTION TO PART 4

If one takes the time to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), they will find that oftentimes what’s woven through these teachings are attempts to attribute to the Virgin Mary accomplishments and credit that do not apply to her and should not be given to her. In doing so, they diminish all that Jesus Christ alone has accomplished for us through His sinless life, His substitutionary atoning death on the cross, His burial, and ultimately His glorious resurrection when He arose bodily from the dead. Please be sure to keep all of these thoughts in mind as you carefully read through this post, and it will become much more evident to you how they do this as we continue going through the teachings of the CCC. The truth of what I am warning you about will be confirmed to you as you read their teachings, and their teachings will be refuted by what should be our ultimate authority –the Word of God. You will see how the focus of one’s attention is frequently made to shift from being on Jesus Christ, and instead, Catholics are directed to Mary or to the apostle Peter, who they claim was appointed as the first pope and the head of the church by Jesus Christ Himself. You will then come to realize why precious Catholics are never able to comprehend the depth of the love that God has for them, and the glorious good news of the gospel –that Jesus Christ’s “once for all” sacrifice was sufficient to pay the debt of our sins in full!

Once again, I will only make comments when I see that it is completely necessary to do so. All I ask for you to do is to please take a minute now to pray in order to ask God to give you discernment before you continue reading. Thank you.

Now let’s begin PART 4:

Mary’s predestination

“God sent forth his Son,” but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free cooperation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the Virgin’s name was Mary”: The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.” CCC (Para 488)

“Through the centuries the Church has become even more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854. The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” (Para 491)

“The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioning by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.” By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.” (Para 493)

“Let it be done to me according to your word…”

“At the announcement that she would give birth to “the Son of the Most High” without knowing man, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary responded with the obedience of faith, certain that “with God nothing will be impossible” : “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word.” Thus giving her consent to God’s word, Mary becomes the mother of Jesus. Espousing the divine will for salvation wholeheartedly, without a single sin to restrain her, she gave herself entirely to the person and to the work of her Son; she did so in order to serve the mystery of redemption with him and dependent on him, by God’s grace: As St. Irenaeus says, ” Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert…: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.” Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary “the Mother of the living” and frequently claim: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.” (Para 494)

Mary’s divine motherhood

“Called in the Gospels “the mother of Jesus,” Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as “the mother of my Lord.” In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly the “Mother of God.” (Theo-tokos). (Council of Ephesis – 431)

Mary — “ever-virgin”

“The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin.” (Para 499)

“Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to the other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, “brothers of Jesus” are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls “the other Mary.” They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.” (Para 500)

Let’s stop for a few minutes and take time to look at the verses in which the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ are mentioned:

“When Jesus finished telling these parables, he left that place and went back to his home town. He taught in their synagogue, and those who heard him were amazed. “Where did he get such wisdom?” they asked. And what about his miracles? Isn’t he the carpenter’s son? Isn’t Mary his mother, and aren’t James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas his brothers? Aren’t all his sisters living here? Where did he get all this? And so they rejected him.” (Matthew 13:55-57a)

“Jesus’ mother and brothers came to him, but were unable to join him because of the crowd. Someone said to Jesus, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside and want to see you.” Jesus said to them all, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 8:19-21)

“After this, Jesus traveled in Galilee; he did not want to travel in Judea, because the Jewish authorities there were wanting to kill him. The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was near, so Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave this place and go to Judea, so that your disciples will see the works you are doing. No one hides what he is doing if he wants to be well known. Since you are doing these things, let the whole world know about you!” (Not even his brothers believed in him.) Jesus said to them, “The right time for me has not yet come. Any time is right for you. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I keep telling it that its ways are bad. You go on to the feast. I am not going to this feast, because the right time has not come for me.” He said this, and then stayed on in Galilee. After his brothers went to the feast, Jesus also went; however, he did not go openly, but went secretly.” (John 7:1-10)

“They entered Jerusalem and went up to the room where they were staying: Peter, John, James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Patriot, and Judas the son of James. They gathered frequently to pray as a group, together with the women, and with Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” (Acts 1:13,14)

“It was three years later that I went to Jerusalem to get information from Peter, and I stayed with him for two weeks. I did not see any other apostle except James, the Lord’s brother.” (Galatians 1:19)

Now back to sharing some more rather disturbing information with you from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“At once virgin and mother, Mary is the symbol and the most perfect realization of the Church: “the Church indeed…by receiving the word of God in faith becomes herself a mother. By preaching and Baptism she brings forth sons, who are conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of God, to a new and immortal life. She herself is a virgin, who keeps in its entirety and purity the faith she pledged to her spouse.” (Para 507)

“The Virgin Mary “cooperated through free faith and obedience in human salvation” (LG 56). She uttered her yes “in the name of all human nature” (St. Thomas Aquinas, (STh III, 30, 1). By her obedience she became the new Eve, mother of the living. “(Para 511)

At this point I’d like to stop for a few minutes to share a few Scriptures with you in order to show you how, once again, some of the teachings of the Catholic church — such as the one above — elevates Mary to a position of far more honor than is due to her, because it attributes to Mary, things that only Jesus Christ accomplished for us. When it comes to our salvation, the truth of God’s Word puts the focus on Jesus Christ where it should always be. All glory and honor belongs to Him alone; from His perfect obedience, to His choice to willingly lay down His life for us, He alone did everything necessary to provide for our salvation! God’s Word has nothing to say about Mary being the “new Eve.” It does, however, show us that Jesus Christ was the “last Adam.” Dear Catholic, and others of you who have not yet come to understand the truly good news of the gospel, please ask God to open your eyes to the truth, and then read these Scriptures:

“Sin came into the world through one man, and his sin brought death with it. As a result, death spread to the whole human race, because all men sinned. There was sin in the world before the Law was given; but where there is no law, no account is kept of sins. But from the time of Adam to the time of Moses death ruled over all men, even over those who did not sin as Adam did by disobeying God’s commands. Adam was a figure of the one who was to come.But the two are not the same, because God’s free gift is not like Adam’s sin. It is true that many men died because of the sin of that one man. But God’s grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many men through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. And there is a difference between God’s gift and the sin of one man. After the one sin came the judgment of “Guilty” ; but after so many sins comes the undeserved gift of “Not guilty!” It is true that through the sin of one man death began to rule, because of that one man. But how much greater is the result of what was done by the one man, Jesus Christ! All who receive God’s abundant grace and the free gift of his righteousness will rule in life through Christ. So then, as the one sin condemned all men, in the same way the one righteous act sets all men free and gives them life. And just as many men were made sinners as the result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way many will be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man. Law was introduced in order to increase wrongdoing, but where sin increased, God’s grace increased much more. So then, just as sin ruled by means of death, so also God’s grace rules by means of righteousness, leading us to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 5:12-21)

“And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is a delusion and you are still lost in your sins. It would also mean that the believers in Christ who have died are lost. If our hope in Christ is good for this life only, and no more, then we deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world. But the truth is that Christ has been raised from death, as the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised. For just as death came by means of a man, in the same way the rising from death comes by means of a man. For just as all men die because of their union to Adam, in the same way all will be raised to life because of their union to Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:17-22)

“For the scripture says, “The first man, Adam, was created a living being” ; but the last Adam is the life-giving Spirit. It is not the spiritual that comes first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first Adam was made of the dust of the earth; the second Adam came from heaven. Those who belong to the earth are like the one who was made of the earth; those who are of heaven are like the one who came from heaven. Just as we wear the likeness of the man made of earth, so we will wear the likeness of the Man from heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:45-49)

The Christmas mystery

“To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become children of God we must be “born from above” or “born of God.” Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. Christmas is the mystery of this “marvelous exchange” : “O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers of the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.” (Para 526)

At this point I must pause in order to share some concerns with you related to the above statement. First I want to remind you of what I shared with you in PART 3 of this series concerning what Para 460 says:

“For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”

Now, again, take a look at the final portion of Para 526 that I posted for you below, and you will see that the focus, once more, goes back to this mystical concept that they previously presented about sharing in the “divinity of Christ.”

“O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers of the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.”

Now to address an even more important concern in regards to Para 526:

While it is true that “in order to become children of God we must be “born from above” or “born of God,” (John 1:10-13, John 3:1-8, 1 Peter 1:23) and as amazing and as miraculous as it was that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, clothed Himself in human flesh and came to this earth being born of the Virgin Mary, this “marvelous exchange” that they see as taking place at Christmas, in all actuality truly took place at the cross:

“He was given over to die because of our sins, and was raised to life to put us right with God.” (Romans 4:25)

“It is true that through the sin of one man death began to rule, because of that one man. But how much greater is the result of what was done by the one man, Jesus Christ! All who receive God’s abundant grace and the free gift of his righteousness will rule in life through Christ. So then, as the one sin condemned all men, in the same way, the one righteous act sets all men free and gives them life. And just as many men were made sinners as the result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way many will be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man.” (Romans 5:17-19)

“Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that we, in union with him, might share the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Please keep in mind that even though many Bible translations say in 2 Corin. 5:21 that Jesus Christ became sin, if this was true He would not have been the spotless, sinless Lamb of God that could have been the perfect sacrifice for our sins by giving His life in our place. He truly bore our sins, as it says in Isaiah 53:6, “And the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,” but He did not become sin. This is a heresy that is taught in the Word of Faith movement by preachers such as Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, and many others too numerous to mention.

“He committed no sin; no one ever heard a lie come from his lips. When he was insulted he did not answer back with an insult; when he suffered he did not threaten, but placed his hopes in God, the righteous Judge. Christ himself carried our sins in his body to the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:22-24)

This song also expresses Biblical truth about the great exchange taking place at the cross:

Let’s continue once again going through the CCC:

“Through Baptism the Christian is sacramentally assimilated to Jesus, who in his own Baptism anticipates his own death and resurrection. The Christian must enter into this mystery of humble self-abasement and repentance, go down into the water with Jesus in order to rise with him, be reborn of water and the Spirit so as to become the Father’s beloved son in the Son and “walk in newness of life.” :

“Let us be buried with Christ in Baptism to rise with him; let us go down with him to be raised with him; and let us rise with him to be glorified with him. Everything that happened to Christ lets us know that, after the bath of water, the Holy Spirit swoops down upon us from high heaven and that, adopted by the Father’s voice, we become sons of God.” (Para 537)

Much more will be shared with you in an upcoming post in this series concerning the teachings of baptism according to the Catholic church when we get to the section on the Sacraments. However, let’s stop for a few moments and carefully read what God’s Word has to say about baptism. As you are reading, please ask yourself what these Scriptures focus on. Is the main focus on baptism? Or is it on something else? Clearly put, is it the act of baptism that saves? Or is it our choice to believe that saves us?

“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16)

“An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, “Get yourself ready and go south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This road is no longer used.) So Philip got ready and went. Now an Ethiopian eunuch was on his way home. This man was an important official in charge of the treasury of the Queen, or Candace, of Ethiopia. He had been to Jerusalem to worship God, and was going back in his carriage. As he rode along he was reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and stay close to that carriage.” Philip ran over and heard him reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah; so he asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” “How can I understand,” the official replied, “unless someone explains it to me?” And he invited Philip to climb up and sit in the carriage with him. The passage of scripture which he was reading was this, “He was like a sheep that is taken to be slaughtered; he was like a lamb that makes no sound when its wool is cut off; he did not say a word. He was humiliated, and justice was denied him. No one will be able to tell about his descendants, because his life on earth has come to an end.” The official said to Philip, “Tell me, of whom is the prophet saying this? Of himself, or of someone else?” Philip began to speak; starting from this very passage of scripture, he told him the Good News about Jesus. As they traveled down the road they came to a place where there was some water, and the official said, “Here is some water. What is to keep me from being baptized?” Philip said to him, “You may be baptized if you believe with all your heart.” “I do,” he answered; “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” The official ordered the carriage to stop; and both of them, Philip and the official, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water the Spirit of the Lord took Philip away. The official did not see him again, but continued on his way, full of joy.” (Acts 8:26-39)

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a violent earthquake, which shook the prison to its foundations. At once all the doors opened, and the chains fell of all the prisoners. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open he thought that all the prisoners had escaped; so he pulled out his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul shouted at the top of his voice, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” The jailer called for a light, rushed in, and fell trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas. Then he led them out and asked, “What must I do, sirs, to be saved?” “Believe in the Lord Jesus,” they said, “and you will be saved–you and your family.” Then they preached the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that very hour of the night the jailer took them and washed off their wounds; and he and all his family were baptized at once.” (Acts 16:25-33)

And lastly, consider this passage of Scripture, especially what Jesus Christ says in reply to what the thief on the cross says, and keep in mind that the thief on the cross was not baptized before he died:

“When they came to the place called “The Skull,” they nailed Jesus to the cross there, and the two criminals, one on his right, and one on his left. Jesus said, “Forgive them, Father! They don’t know what they are doing.” They divided his clothes among themselves by throwing dice. The people stood there watching, while the Jewish leaders made fun of him, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Messiah whom God has chosen!” The soldiers also made fun of him; they came up to him and offered him cheap wine, and said, “Save yourself, if you are the king of the Jews!” These words were written above him: “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals hanging there hurled insults at him, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The other one, however, rebuked him, saying, “Don’t you fear God? We are all under the same sentence. Ours, however, is only right, because we are getting what we deserve for what we did; but he has done nothing wrong.” And he said to Jesus, “Remember me, Jesus, when you come as King!” Jesus said to him, “I tell you this: today you will be in Paradise with me.” (Luke 23:33-43)

NOTE: Many of you may already be aware of the fact that punctuation marks were added to Biblical manuscripts hundreds of years later. (See video and article below by GotQuestions?). There are many Catholic theologians who place a comma in Luke 23:43 after the word “today” thus changing the meaning entirely, especially concerning the timing of when the thief would be in Paradise with Jesus. It is interesting to note, however, that, as you can see from the above passage of Scripture in the final verse (verse 43), this Sacred Heart League Catholic version of the New Testament that I am quoting from in this series does not put the comma after the word “today,” thus agreeing with all of the main Bible translations in their understanding of the text to say that Jesus was proclaiming to the repentant thief on the cross that he would indeed be in Paradise with Jesus on that very day! The website, GotQuestions, oftentimes has some very good Biblical information on various subjects, as you will see by the video below. However, I do not endorse them because they, at times, recommend pastors and teachers who promote mysticism, such as Charles Swindoll, (You will see this at the very end of their article that I quick captured for you below this video, followed by another quick capture of an article on Lighthouse Trails to show clear evidence that C S does indeed promote mysticism) in spite of the fact that they actually expose mysticism in many of their articles on their website. Now do you see how important it is for us to pray for discernment, to test things against Scripture, and to place our trust in Jesus Christ alone?

Now let’s continue going through the CCC:

“Through a revelation from the Father, Peter had confessed: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Our Lord then declared to him: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Christ, the “living stone,” thus assures his Church, built on Peter of victory over the powers of death. Because of the faith he confessed Peter will remain the unshakable rock of the Church. His mission will be to keep this faith from every lapse and to strengthen his brothers in it.” (Para 552)

“Jesus entrusted a specific authority to Peter: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” The “power of the keys” designates authority to govern the house of God, which is the Church. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, confirmed this mandate after his Resurrection: “Feed my sheep.” The power to “bind and loose” connotes the authority to absolve sins, to pronounce doctrinal judgments, and to make disciplinary decisions in the Church. Jesus entrusted this authority to the Church through the ministry of the apostles and in particular through the ministry of Peter, the only one to whom he specifically entrusted the keys of the kingdom.” (Para 553)

Please consider referring back to Part 3 in this series in which I already addressed this teaching concerning Peter being the Rock. You can do so by clicking on the link a little further below. In this post, however, I just want to share some Scriptures with you to point you to what God’s Word has to say concerning who the church is built upon:

“Jesus is the one of whom the scripture says, “The stone that you builders despised turned out to be the most important stone. Salvation is to be found through him alone; for there is no one else in all the world, whose name God has given to men, by whom we can be saved.” (Acts 4:11,12)

“What shall we say, then? This: that the Gentiles, who were not trying to put themselves right with God, were put right with him through faith; while the chosen people, who were seeking a law that would put them right with God, did not find it. And why not? Because what they did was not based on faith but on works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone” that the scripture speaks of: “Look, I place in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall. But whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.”(Romans 9:30-33)

“By his death on the cross Christ destroyed the enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God. So Christ came and preached the Good News of peace to all–to you Gentiles who were far away from God, and to the Jews who were near to him. It is through Christ that all of us, Jews and Gentiles, are able to come in the one Spirit into the presence of the Father. So then, you Gentiles are not foreigners or strangers any longer; you are now fellow citizens with God’s people, and members of the family of God. You, too, are built upon the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, the cornerstone being Christ Jesus himself. He is the one who holds the whole building together and makes it grow into a sacred temple in the Lord. In union with him you too are being built together with all the others into a house where God lives through his Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:14-22)

“Come to the Lord, the living stone rejected as worthless by men, but chosen as valuable by God. Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple, where you will serve as holy priests to offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ. For the scripture says, “I chose a valuable stone, which now I place for the cornerstone in Zion; and whoever believes in him will never be disappointed.” (1 Peter 2:4-6)

On to the next portion which raises some concern that I’d like to bring to your attention:

“No one, whether shepherd or wise man, can approach God here below except by kneeling before the manger at Bethlehem and adoring him hidden in the weakness of a new-born child.” (Para 563)

Some thoughts for you to ponder concerning the above quote:

This could possibly be why Catholicism places much more emphasis on Christmas than it does on Easter/Resurrection Sunday, and why Jesus is almost always portrayed as a baby when seen in the arms of the Virgin Mary in statues and in pictures; instead of presenting Him as the Victor over sin and death, they keep who He truly is “hidden in the weakness of a new-born child.”

A FEW CLOSING THOUGHTS

Dear Catholic, I hope that you are now beginning to see even more how some of the teachings of the Catholic Church elevates Mary to a position that cannot be verified by Scripture, and how some of their teachings actually contradict Scripture. Mary would never willingly take glory away from Jesus Christ by claiming to have played a part in God’s plan of salvation. (Refer back to Para 494 and Para 511)Yes, she willingly submitted to God’s call to become the mother of Jesus Christ, but it was Jesus Christ, the spotless Lamb of God, who in every detail provided for our salvation by taking God’s full wrath upon Himself that was meant for me and for you. He willingly suffered the brutal torture of crucifixion in our place, and cried out, “It is finished” when God’s anger and wrath towards sin was satisfied. He offers complete forgiveness of sins to whosoever will come to Him and choose to place their full trust in His substitutionary atoning sacrifice on the cross.

Please don’t allow some of Catholicism’s teachings concerning Mary, or any other of their teachings that contradict Scripture lead you away from Jesus Christ who is the only one who did everything necessary to save you. Place your trust in Him alone to save you!

Dear Catholic, after all that I have shared with you in this post, I must now ask you to search your heart before God and to once again answer this question:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Thank you very much for stopping by and taking time to read some of my posts and poems.

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

RELATED SCRIPTURES

“I have complete confidence in the gospel; it is God’s power to save all who believe, first the Jews and also the Gentiles. For the gospel reveals how God puts men right with himself: it is through faith, from beginning to end. As the scripture says, “He who is put right with God through faith shall live.” (Romans 1:17)

“He was given over to die because of our sins, and was raised to life to put us right with God.” (Romans 4:25)

“There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. What the Law could not do, because human nature was weak, God did. He condemned sin in human nature by sending his own son, who came with a nature like man’s sinful nature to do away with sin. God did this so that the righteous demands of the Law might be fully satisfied in us who live according to the Spirit, not according to human nature.” (Romans 8:3)

“WHO hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?And he shall grow up as a tender plant before him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground: there is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, that we should be desirous of him:Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not.Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted.But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth.He was taken away from distress, and from judgment: who shall declare his generation? because he is cut oh out of the land of the living: for the wickedness of my people have I struck him. And he shall give the ungodly for his burial, and the rich for his death: because he hath done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in his mouth.And the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity: if he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand.Because his soul hath laboured, he shall see and be filled: by his knowledge shall this my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities.Therefore will I distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he hath delivered his soul unto death, and was reputed with the wicked: and he hath borne the sins of many, and hath prayed for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53)

SERIES INTRODUCTION

There are two very important reasons why I felt compelled to write this series of posts, and I’d like to briefly share these reasons with you now before I go any further:

1) Since I am a former Catholic who is very aware of the teachings of the Catholic Church because I attended twelve years of Catholic school, attended Catechism classes, made my First Holy Communion, was Confirmed, and faithfully attended Mass not only every Sunday for many years, but also before school began for three years (as required by the school that I attended at the time), and who came to the knowledge of who Jesus Christ truly is and what He actually accomplished for us by reading a Catholic New Testament Bible exactly like the one pictured above, I decided to write this series with the hope of reaching Catholics so that they can not only come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ truly is as His Word, the Bible, declares Him to be, but also so they can see by reading God’s Word that they can have complete forgiveness, lasting joy, true peace, and the assurance of salvation if they choose to believe God’s Word and place their trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. Also, since many Catholics do not realize everything that the Catholic church actually teaches (as I once did not realize until after doing research and reading the CCC), I thought that it was extremely important to share this information to make Catholics aware of many things that are quite disturbing, as you will all soon become aware of as this series continues.

2) This series of posts is also being written with the intention of helping those of you who are born-again, Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ who have no idea of what the teachings of Catholicism are so that you can become aware of their teachings and be prepared to offer hope and assurance of salvation through Jesus Christ to Catholics based solely upon the truth that is recorded in God’s Word.

As we continue on in this series together comparing Scriptures in the Catholic New Testament to teachings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we must keep these important thoughts in mind:

When it comes to our eternal destination — heaven or hell — we must be certain that we place our trust in solid truth and not in speculation or in the traditions of men. The Catholic church claims to be the “one true Church.” Therefore, it stands to reason that their teachings must line up with God’s Word and not contradict it since God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8), and His Word stands firm forever. (Psalm 119:89, Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24,25) If a contradiction is found it must be rejected because God’s Word is our plumb line by which we must measure (or test) the teachings of every religion to see if it lines up or not. If it is off in one point we can be certain that it will lead us further and further away from Biblical truth and lead us into spiritual deception.

This series will cover many different subjects ranging from what does the Catholic Church teach about the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, priests, the pope, sin, forgiveness of sins, salvation, prayer, and what must a Catholic believe in order to receive eternal life. Some of these teachings will shock even many Catholics when they learn what their church actually teaches!

Lord willing, I hope to share at least one post every month with you in this new series until I have covered all the most important teachings that need to be brought to your attention. The main goal that I have in writing this series is to present the Word of God to Catholics — and to every person — in order to point everyone to Jesus Christ, who is our only hope and ‘the only name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved.’ (Acts 4:12)

Dear Catholic, please take a minute now to pray, asking God to open your mind to the Scriptures and to reveal the truth to you –whatever that may be.

Because only God can reveal the truth to you, I will refrain from making any comments unless I find it completely necessary. Since God’s Word is truth I trust that He will not only give you eyes to see the truth, but also I trust that He will give you the courage to respond to His leading. However, each one of you will find yourself having to answer this question when you come to many points that I present to you in these posts after realizing that there are oftentimes extreme differences between what the Word of God says and what Catholicism teaches, and the question that you will have to answer is:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Please keep in mind, as you are carefully reading all of the statements made from the following Catholic sources, that every time you see the word “church” spelled with a capital c they are referring to the Catholic church, since they believe that the “Catholic Church” alone is the “one true Church.”All of the information that I will be sharing with you I have obtained from the following sources:

1) CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (pictured above) – Imprimi Potest – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) – Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church

2) THE WORD OF GOD – THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR IN TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION – SACRED HEART LEAGUE EDITION – IMPRIMATUR JOHN FRANCIS WHEALON, ARCHBISHOP OF HARTFORD, APRIL 15, 1971 SIGNED AND SEALED BY BISHOP JOSEPH B. BRUNINI, DIOCESE OF JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

3) Occasionally when I share a Scripture with you from the Sacred Heart League (SHL) Catholic New Testament and notice that it lacks depth and clarity, I will then follow it with the same verse but in the King James Version in order to give you a better understanding of what is being said, and so that you can see what is missing from the SHL translation.

4) Very briefly in this series, I will also be quoting from THE CATHOLIC DOUAY RHEIMS VERSION OF THE BIBLE – in which you will find the following statements:

“EXCERPT FROM ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR HOLY FATHER BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE:

“The God of all Providence, Who in the adorable designs of His love at first elevated the human race to the participation of the Divine nature, and afterwards delivered it from the universal guilt and ruin, restoring it to its primitive dignity, has in consequence bestowed upon man a splendid gift and safeguard–making known to him, by supernatural means, the hidden Mysteries of His divinity, His wisdom, and His mercy. For although in Divine revelations there are contained some things which are not beyond the reach of unassisted reason, and which are made the objects of such revelation in order “that all may come to know them with facility, certainty, and safety from error, yet not on this account can supernatural Revelation be said to be absolutely necessary; it is only necessary because God has ordained man to a supernatural end.” This supernatural revelation according to the belief of the universal Church, is contained both in unwritten Tradition, and in written Books, which are therefore called sacred and canonical because, “being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the Church.” (Page ix)

“Wherefore it must be recognised that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide; God so disposing, as the Holy Fathers commonly teach, in order that men may investigate them with greater ardour and earnestness, and that what is attained with difficulty may sink more deeply into the mind and heart; and, most of all that they may understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and their teacher. St. Irenaeus long since laid down, that where the charismata of God were, there the truth was to be learnt, and that Holy Scripture was safely interpreted by those who had the Apostolic succession. His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in the renewing of the decree of Trent, declares its “mind” to be this–that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (Page xvii)

“Wherefore the first and dearest object of the Catholic commentator should be to interpret those passages which have received an authentic interpretation either by the sacred writers themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (as in many places of the New Testament), or from the Church, under the assistance of the same Holy Spirit, whether by her solemn judgment or her ordinary and universal magisterium –to interpret those passages in that identical sense, and to prove, by all the resources of science that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation. In the other passages, the analogy of faith should be followed, and Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law; for seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.” (Page xviii)

“For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should nevertheless, bear well in mind–as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages –that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture and never attain its pith.” (Page xix)

If you have already read PART 2 in this series, then you now realize that some of the teachings in Catholicism are rooted in mysticism. This fact will become even clearer as we continue going through more of the teachings in the Catechism of the Catholic church –especially one particular teaching that I am about to share with you in this particular post.

My prayer is that God, by His Holy Spirit, will open the eyes of many Catholics so that they will be able to see the serious problems in some of their teachings, and that they will begin seeking God in His Word — the Bible — for the truth.

In this installment we will cover a few more of the main teachings of Catholicism. You will find that many of their teachings line up completely with Scripture. However, you will soon discover that some of their teachings either conflict with Biblical truth, or that they shockingly and totally oppose Biblical truth.

Dear Catholic, just as I presented some serious concerns to you in PART 1 in this series, I will also be doing the same thing for you in this post. Once again, there will be times when you will be brought to the point of having to make a choice and to answer this very important question:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

All of the Scriptures that I will be sharing with you in this post, unless otherwise noted, will all be taken from the Sacred Heart League Catholic New Testament Bible.

With all of those things in mind, let’s begin:

CHAPTER 2

I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD

“Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church.” (CCC Para 424)

By reading the statement above it may almost appear as if the Catholic church has a Biblical view and is stating that Christ built His Church upon what Peter declared concerning Jesus being the Christ, the Son of the living God. (Matthew 16:15-19) However, as we continue to go through the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) you will see that the Catholic church claims that Jesus Christ built His church upon the apostle Peter, and that Peter was the “rock” that Jesus was referring to, and they also claim that by saying these things, Jesus declared Peter as the first pope:

“What about you?” he asked them. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” “Good for you, Simon, son of John!” answered Jesus. “Because this truth did not come to you from any human being, but it was given to you directly by my Father in heaven. And so I tell you: you are a rock, Peter, and on this rock foundation I will build my church, which not even death will ever be able to overcome. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven; what you prohibit on earth will be prohibited in heaven; what you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” (Matthew 16:15-19)

Who better to share what God’s Word has to say about this passage of Scripture, than Richard Bennett, who was once a devout Catholic Dominican priest for 22 years, until he began to read the Bible and discovered the glorious good news of the true gospel:

I’d like to take a few moments now to share some Scriptures with you in order to help you see these things from a Biblical perspective before we move on:

1. “There is none holy as the Lord is: for there is no other beside thee, and there is none strong like our God.” (1 Samuel 2:2) (DRV)

“There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside you: neither is there any rock like our God.” (1 Samuel 2:2) (KJV)

2. “The Lord is my firmament, my refuge, and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and in him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of my salvation, and my support.” (Psalm 18:2)

“The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.” (Psalm 18:2)(KJV)

3. “For who is God but the LORD? Or who is God but our God?” (Psalm 18:31) DRV)

“For who is God save the LORD? Or who is a rock save our God?” (Psalm 18:31) (KJV)

4. “Unto the end, a psalm for David, in an ecstasy. In thee, O Lord, have I hoped, Iet me never be confounded: deliver me in thy justice. Bow down thy ear to me: make haste to deliver me. Be thou unto me a God, a protector, and a house of refuge, to save me. For thou art my strength and my refuge; and for thy name’s sake thou wilt lead me, and nourish me.” (Psalm 31:1-3)

It is clear by these verses (at least in the King James Version) that God alone is the Rock! And, in fact, God’s Word clearly shows us that Jesus Christ — who was revealed to us as God in the flesh in the New Testament — is our Rock:

“For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea: And did all eat the same spiritual food, And all drank the same spiritual drink; and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” 1 Corinthians 10:1-4) (SHLCNT)

For more verses on God being our Rock, please consider reading this:

“Now let’s continue on:

“At the heart of catechesis we find, in essence, a Person, the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son from the Father…who suffered and died for us and who now, after rising, is living with us forever.” To catechize is “to reveal in the Person of Christ the whole of God’s eternal design reaching fulfillment in that Person. It is to seek to understand the meaning of Christ’s actions and words and of the signs worked by him.” Catechesis aims at putting “people…in communion…with Jesus Christ: only he can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.” (Para 426)

“The name “Jesus” signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation, so that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Para 432)

While most of the above two teachings are quite Biblical because they are based on Scripture (John 14:6, Acts 4:12) I’d like to take a moment to point out that although the Catholic Church may proclaim “only he [Jesus Christ] can lead us to the love of the Father…,” you will soon see in upcoming installments of this series how their teachings not only make it rather impossible to actually get to Jesus Christ, but also you will sadly see how Catholics are presented with alternative unbiblical ways in an attempt to gain access to the Father, namely through petitioning “the Virgin Mary” and “the saints.”

As I mentioned to you in the previous post in this series, you will soon discover that some of the teachings of Catholicism are rooted in mysticism. Well, the time is now. You are about to see (IMO) the most shocking and disturbing teaching that can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church!However, before I share it with you, I’d like to share something else with you first:

If any of you listened to Warren B Smith’s message at the recent Berean Call Conference, you may remember that he mentioned the book entitled, “Called To Be The Children Of God: The Catholic Theology Of Human Deification.” Here are just a few excerpts from a preview of that book that I found on AMAZON.COM:

Although in the last paragraph in the capture of the portion above, the author is quick to state, “We are not God,” in his next statement he quotes Jesus as saying, “[Y]ou are gods,” (John 10:34) as describing our sonship. This is why reading a verse in context and testing things that are said in light of Scripture are so extremely important! Let’s look at John 10:34 in context:

“Jesus was walking in Solomon’s porch in the temple, when the Jews gathered around him and said, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? Tell us the plain truth: are you the Messiah?” Jesus answered, “I have already told you, but you would not believe me. The works I do by my Father’s authority speak on my behalf; but you will not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never die; and no one can snatch them away from me. What my Father has given me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them away from the Father’s care. The Father and I are one.” Then the Jews once more picked up stones to throw at him. Jesus said to them, “I have done many good works before you which the Father gave me to do; for which one of these do you want to stone me?” The Jews answered back, “We do not want to stone you because of any good works, but because of the way in which you insult God! You are only a man, but you are trying to make yourself God!” (34)Jesus answered, “It is written in your own Law that God said, ‘You are gods.’ We know that what the scripture says is true forever, and God called them gods, those people to whom his message was given. As for me, the Father chose me and sent me into the world. How, then, can you say that I insult God because I said that I am the Son of God? Do not believe me, then, if I am not doing my Father’s works. But if I do them, even thought you do not believe me, you should at least believe my works, in order that you may know once and for all that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” Once more they tried to arrest him, but he slipped out of their hands.” (John 10:23-39)

When Jesus said in verse 34, “It is written in your own Law that God said, ‘You are gods,’ ” He was quoting from Psalm 82:6 which says:

“I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.”

However, by reading the very next verse, Psalm 82:7, we come to clearly understand the intended meaning of verse 6:

“But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”

In context you can now see that Jesus is not telling them that they are gods.

Here is Matthew Henry’s Commentary on that passage of Scripture:

“It is hard for men to have honour put upon them, and not to be proud of it. But all the rulers of the earth shall die, and all their honour shall be laid in the dust. God governs the world. There is a righteous God to whom we may go, and on whom we may depend. This also has respect to the kingdom of the Messiah. Considering the state of affairs in the world, we have need to pray that the Lord Jesus would speedily rule over all nations, in truth, righteousness, and peace.”

In the quick capture below you will see the terms “deification,”“deifying union,” and “union with God” mentioned, and in the last paragraph you will see how an attempt is made to elevate Moses to be seen in a higher position than God’s Word intends us to see him in:

On biblestudies.org the Commentary on Exodus Chapter 7 states the following that I quick captured below for you concerning verse 1:

“A god to Pharaoh”: Moses, as the spokesman and ambassador for God, would speak with authority and power. “Thy prophet”: Aaron, as the divinely appointed spokesman for Moses, would forthrightly deliver the message given to him. Acts 14:11-13, where Barnabas and Paul were so perceived in a similar situation. This simply means that Moses would represent the One who sent him to Pharaoh, not that Moses would be God to him.”

Some Catholic writers and theologians are quick to deny that they are saying that man can actually become God. However, what you are now about to see that is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly says otherwise:

“The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature.” For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” The only begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.” (Para 460)

This sounds eerily similar to a teaching that can be found in the cult of Mormonism which states the following:

“As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become.” (Please also consider watching the video below under Related Videos).

Let’s look at what God’s Word has to say about why Jesus became flesh, and why He came into our world:

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

“Before the world was created, the Word already existed; he was with God, and he was the same as God. From the very beginning, the Word was with God. Through him God made all things; not one thing in all creation was made without him. The Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out. God sent his messenger, a man named John, who came to tell the people about the light. He came to tell them, so that all should hear the message and believe. He himself was not the light; he came to tell about the light. This was the real light, the light that comes into the world and shines on all men. The Word, then, was in the world. God made the world through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own country, but his own people did not receive him. Some, however, did receive him and believed in him; so he gave them the right to become God’s children. They did not become God’s children by natural means, by being born as the children of a human father; God himself was their Father. The Word became a human being and lived among us. We saw his glory, full of grace and truth. This was the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son. John told about him. He cried out, “This is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘He comes after me, but he is greater than I am, because he existed before I was born.” (John 1:1-15)

“The same sacrifices are offered forever, year after year. How can the Law, then, by means of these sacrifices, make perfect the people who come to God? If the people worshiping God had been made really clean from their sins, they would not feel guilty of sin any more, and all sacrifices would stop. As it is, however, the sacrifices serve to remind people of their sins, year after year. For the blood of bulls and goats can never take sins away. For this reason, when Christ was about to come into the world, he said to God: “You do not want sacrifices and offerings, but you have prepared a body for me. You are not pleased with animals burned whole on the altar, or with sacrifices to take away sins. Then I said, ‘Here I am, God, to do what you want me to do, just as it is written of me in the book of the Law.’ First he said, “You neither want nor are you pleased with sacrifices and offerings, or with animals burned on the altar and the sacrifices to take away sins.” He said this even though all these sacrifices are offered according to the Law. The he said, “Here I am, God, to do what you want me to do.” So God does away with all the old sacrifices and puts the sacrifice of Christ in their place. Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all made clean from sin by the offering that he made of his own body, once and for all.” (Hebrews 10:1b-10)

“For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked, at the time that God chose. It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may be that someone might dare to die for a good person. . But God has shown us how much he loves us; it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! By his death we are now put right with God; how much more then will we be saved by him from God’s wrath. We were God’s enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son. Now that we are God’s friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ’s life! But that is not all; we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has now made us God’s friends.” (Romans 5:6-11)

“For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life you received from your ancestors. It was not something that loses its value, such as silver or gold; you were set free by the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or spot. He had been chosen by God before the creation of the world, and was revealed in these last days for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from death and gave him glory; and so your faith and hope are fixed on God.” (1 Peter 1:18-21)

“This is how God showed his love for us: he sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him. This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.” (1 John 4:9,10)

Were you moved to tears of joy and gratitude as you read those passages of Scripture? If not, I pray that God will open your mind to the truth of His Word so that you can grasp the depth of the love that God has for you as He did for me when I first read through the book of Hebrews and Romans and came to realize all that Jesus Christ did for me when He died in my place (and yours) on the cross and took the full wrath that God intended for me (and you) upon Himself for all of my sins (and yours). Such amazing love! To think that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, would be willing to leave the glories of heaven to come to this earth in order to live a sinless life that we could never live, to become the perfect sacrifice for our sins! To think that He endured the excruciating pain of crucifixion because of our sins, and that He willingly gave His life for us! And to know that His once for all sacrifice was sufficient to satisfy God’s wrath that He has towards us because of our sins, and that Jesus Christ paid the debt for allof our sins in full! Now we can come directly to God through Jesus Christ –if we believe and receive what He did for us and place our trust in Him alone to save us! That is the good news of the true gospel!

Dear Catholic, it is at this point that I must stop and ask you this question as I did in Part 1 of this series:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Many Catholic priests and nuns promote the practice of Contemplative Prayer and speak and write about mystics of the past such as Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and others, who go into great detail about their alleged mystical experiences with Jesus Christ. They also speak highly about some of what can only be described as very disturbing messages that they supposedly received from Him. These mystical practices are the very same practices that we are presently seeing coming into Bible believing churches through Spiritual Formation classes! Therefore, Lord willing, in the near future I hope to be able to find enough time to write a post in order to document some of the things that I have just shared with you so that you can see for yourselves how these practices are rooted in Catholicism, but ultimately they are rooted in Hinduism and the occult.

Here is just one example on an Order of Carmelites Catholic Nuns website. Note the list of Carmelite Saints On Prayer and how Teresa of Avila, Brother Lawrence, and others who are known to have practiced these mystical forms of prayer are mentioned. In the last paragraph of the second quick capture below you will see the following words that will show you it’s no longer about having faith in God and having knowledge of Him through reading and studying His Word; it’s all about bypassing the mind in order to have an experience with God:

“It is not enough to know that God loves us; we’ve got to feel that God loves us. Feelings are deeper than knowing –much deeper. The heart is much deeper than the head. And Saint Teresa of Avila tells us that ‘The Great King’ (aka God) is found in the center of one’s heart. That’s what Theresa’s description of prayer is telling us, and that is why it is truly amazing; this description comes straight from the center of her heart.”

Can someone really trust what comes straight from the center of her heart, or from anyone’s heart? Take a moment to read what God’s Word has to say about our hearts:

“The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) (DRV)

No matter how sincere someone may be when they may share with us about an experience they may supposedly have had with Jesus Christ, or an angel, etc., if what they share with us doesn’t line up with the truth presented in God’s Word, we are to reject it and to exhort them to test the spirits, as well as their experiences, against Biblical truth.

I shared this video that a dear Sister-in-Christ (YouTube Channel Psalm86) put together at least once with all of you before, but it’s important at this point to share it with you again…starting at the 24:55 minute mark until the 34:14 minute mark in the following video, you will hear vivid and very disturbing accounts of some of Teresa of Avila’s alleged experiences with Jesus Christ. When time allows, I encourage you to pray for discernment, and then watch the whole video:

Let’s continue on now through the Catechism where we will sadly find another teaching that contradicts Scripture, even though an attempt is made to try and justify this teaching:

“Since the Word became flesh in assuming a true humanity, Christ’s body was finite. Therefore the human face of Jesus can be portrayed; at the seventh ecumenical council (Nicaea II in 787) the Church recognized its representation in holy images to be legitimate.”(Para 476)

“At the same time the Church has always acknowledged that in the body of Jesus “we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.” The individual characteristics of Christ’s body express the divine person of God’s Son. He has made the features of his human body his own, to the point that they can be venerated when portrayed in a holy image, for the believer “who venerates the icon is venerating in it the person of the one depicted.” (Para 477)

In spite of what was decided at the seventh ecumenical council, here is what God’s Word has to say about images:

“Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth.” (Exodus 20:4) (Catholic Douay-Rheims Version)

“Turn ye not to idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods. I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:4) (CDRV)

“I am the Lord your God: you shall not make to yourselves any idol or graven thing, neither shall you erect pillars, nor set up a remarkable stone in your land, to adore it: for I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 26:1) (CDRV)

“Their graven things thou shalt burn with fire: thou shalt not covet the silver and gold of which they are made, neither shalt thou take to thee any thing thereof, lest thou offend, because it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.” (Deuteronomy 7:5)(CDRV)

“Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to thy name give glory. For thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake: lest the gentiles should say: Where is their God? But our God is in heaven: he hath done all things whatsoever he would. The idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the works of the hands of men. They have mouths and speak not: they have eyes and see not. They have ears and hear not: they have noses and smell not. They have hands and feel not: they have feet and walk not: neither shall they cry out through their throat.Let them that make them become like unto them: and all such as trust in them.” (Psalm 115:1-8) (CDRV)

“For the Lord will judge his people, and will be entreated in favour of his servants. The idols of the Gentiles are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands. They have a mouth, but they speak not: they have eyes, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not: neither is there any breath in their mouths. Let them that make them be like to them: and every one that trusteth in them.” (Psalm 135:14-18) (CDRV)

“They are turned back: let them be greatly confounded, that trust in a graven thing, that say to a molten thing: You are our god.” (Isaiah 42:17) (CDRV)

“Since we are God’s children, we should not suppose that his nature is anything like an image of gold or silver or stone,shaped by the art and skill of man. God has overlooked the times when men did not know, but now he commands all men everywhere to turn away from these evil ways. For he has fixed a day in which he will judge the whole world with justice, by means of a man he has chosen. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising that man from death!” (Acts 17:29-31)

Dear Catholic, once again I must stop and ask you:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Here is a teaching in the CCC that is very Biblical:

“Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men.” (Para 480)

Many of us will say, “Amen,” to that particular teaching because it lines up with 1 Timothy 2:5 which says,

“For there is one God, and there is one who brings God and men together, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself to redeem all men.”

However, please keep the above Scripture in mind, because as we continue going through the Catechism of the Catholic Church we will see another teaching that attempts to add to — and even pervert — the clear finality of the solid truth presented in that verse, and it ultimately robs Jesus Christ of the glory that belongs to Him alone. Actually, Lord willing, we will be addressing some of those teachings in the next installment of this series which, Lord willing, I hope to be able to write and to share with you either by the end of September, or most likely it will be early to mid October.

IN CLOSING:

I pray for those of you who will take the time to read these posts, that you will not only come to realize the extreme importance of testing the teachings of every pastor, teacher, — and priest — against the truth of God’s Word so that you can know if it is true or not, but also, and equally as important, I pray that you will come to realize the extreme importance of thinking for yourselves instead of placing your trust in men by just simply accepting your favorite pastor’s, teacher’s, and priest’s interpretations of Scripture, because where you will spend eternity depends completely upon what you choose to believe, and who you place your trust in.

Only Jesus Christ and the gospel — as revealed in God’s Word — has the power to save you, not any religious system or church. We must be like the Bereans and examine the Scriptures daily to see if what is being said is true or not so that we will not be deceived and end up accepting “another Jesus” and “another gospel.”(Acts 17:11, 2 Corinthians 11:3,4, Galatians 1:6-9)

Thank you very much for stopping by and for taking time out of your busy day to read some of my posts and poems.

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

RELATED SCRIPTURES

“I have complete confidence in the gospel; it is God’s power to save all who believe, first the Jews and also the Gentiles. For the gospel reveals how God puts men right with himself: it is through faith, from beginning to end. As the Scripture says,”He who is put right with God through faith shall live.” (Romans 1:16,17) (SHLCNT)

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16,17) (KJV)

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:6-9)

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” (2 Corinthians 11:3,4)

“Let us, then, hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God–Jesus, the Son of God. Our high priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy with our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a high priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us be brave, then, and come forward to God’s throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.” (Hebrews 4:14-16) (SHLCNT)

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16) (KJV)

Just a quick post to let you know about the Berean Call Conference that started today. The topics that will be discussed will be extremely important ones because they address many popular teachings that distort Biblical truth, the nature of God, and the gospel itself!

The topics that will be discussed will show you just how relevant God’s Word is for our day because the “doctrines of demons” that God’s Word warns us about in 1 Timothy 4:1 have now come into many churches these days through things such as Contemplative Prayer, Spiritual Formation classes, and through many other occultic practices. Because the titles of these occultic practices have been cloaked in somewhat Christian terminology when they are presented in many churches, and because some Christians fail to pray for discernment and fail to test things against Scripture and are just not aware of the fact that these practices are occultic in nature, many Christians are now being led away from Biblical truth and into the world of the occult!

Not only will these speakers share important information with you, but also these speakers will encourage you by sharing God’s Word with you. If you haven’t realized it yet, after listening to these speakers you will come to realize the extreme importance of testing the words of every pastor and teacher that you listen to against God’s Word so that you will not be among the many who have been deceived by some of these practices and teachings.

Even though some of these sessions have already ended, if you click on them you will still be able to listen to the entire presentation for at least the next few days.

As always, please be certain to test everything that you hear each speaker say against Scripture, as well as what each and every pastor and teacher that you listen to every day says. Spiritual deception in the church is growing faster than any of us as Christians ever imagined that it would, and as time goes on things will only be getting worse!

Also, if you decide to check out the websites of the speakers — or any Christian website — I urge you to test everything that you will find there against Scripture, as well, because sadly, many pastors and teachers these days who were once Biblically solid, are slowly beginning to stray from Biblical truth and are now embracing many of the teachings that you will become aware of and warned about in this Conference.

When time allows I hope that you will tune in and listen to these speakers and the very important messages that they will be sharing this weekend.

Thank you very much for stopping by and taking time out of your day to read some of my posts and poems.

SERIES INTRODUCTION

There are two very important reasons why I felt compelled to write this series of posts, and I’d like to briefly share these reasons with you now before I go any further:

1) Since I am a former Catholic who is very aware of the teachings of the Catholic Church because I attended twelve years of Catholic school, attended Catechism classes, made my First Holy Communion, was Confirmed, and faithfully attended Mass not only every Sunday for many years, but also before school began for three years (as required by the school that I attended at the time), and who came to the knowledge of who Jesus Christ truly is and what He actually accomplished for us by reading a Catholic New Testament Bible exactly like the one pictured above, I decided to write this series with the hope of reaching Catholics so that they can not only come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ truly is as His Word, the Bible, declares Him to be, but also so they can see by reading God’s Word that they can have complete forgiveness, lasting joy, true peace, and the assurance of salvation if they choose to believe God’s Word and place their trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. Also, since many Catholics do not realize everything that the Catholic church actually teaches (as I once did not realize until after doing research and reading the CCC), I thought that it was extremely important to share this information to make Catholics aware of many things that are quite disturbing, as you will all soon become aware of as this series continues.

2) This series of posts is also being written with the intention of helping those of you who are born-again, Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ who have no idea of what the teachings of Catholicism are so that you can become aware of their teachings and be prepared to offer hope and assurance of salvation through Jesus Christ to Catholics based solely upon the truth that is recorded in God’s Word.

As we continue on in this series together comparing Scriptures in the Catholic New Testament to teachings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we must keep these important thoughts in mind:

When it comes to our eternal destination — heaven or hell — we must be certain that we place our trust in solid truth and not in speculation or in the traditions of men. The Catholic church claims to be the “one true Church.” Therefore, it stands to reason that their teachings must line up with God’s Word and not contradict it since God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8), and His Word stands firm forever. (Psalm 119:89, Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24,25) If a contradiction is found it must be rejected because God’s Word is our plumb line by which we must measure (or test) the teachings of every religion to see if it lines up or not. If it is off in one point we can be certain that it will lead us further and further away from Biblical truth and lead us into spiritual deception.

This series will cover many different subjects ranging from what does the Catholic Church teach about the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, priests, the pope, sin, forgiveness of sins, salvation, prayer, and what must a Catholic believe in order to receive eternal life. Some of these teachings will shock even many Catholics when they learn what their church actually teaches!

Lord willing, I hope to share at least one post every month with you in this new series until I have covered all the most important teachings that need to be brought to your attention. The main goal that I have in writing this series is to present the Word of God to Catholics — and to every person — in order to point everyone to Jesus Christ, who is our only hope and ‘the only name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved.’ (Acts 4:12)

Dear Catholic, please take a minute now to pray, asking God to open your mind to the Scriptures and to reveal the truth to you –whatever that may be.

Because only God can reveal the truth to you, I will refrain from making any comments unless I find it completely necessary. Since God’s Word is truth I trust that He will not only give you eyes to see the truth, but also I trust that He will give you the courage to respond to His leading. However, each one of you will find yourself having to answer this question when you come to each point that I present to you in these posts after realizing that there are oftentimes extreme differences between what the Word of God says and what Catholicism teaches, and the question that you will have to answer is:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Please keep in mind, as you are carefully reading all of the statements made from the following Catholic sources, that every time you see the word “church” spelled with a capital c they are referring to the Catholic church, since they believe that the “Catholic Church” alone is the “one true Church.”All of the information that I will be sharing with you I have obtained from the following sources:

1) CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (pictured above) – Imprimi Potest – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) – Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church

2) THE WORD OF GOD – THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR IN TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION – SACRED HEART LEAGUE EDITION – IMPRIMATUR JOHN FRANCIS WHEALON, ARCHBISHOP OF HARTFORD, APRIL 15, 1971 SIGNED AND SEALED BY BISHOP JOSEPH B. BRUNINI, DIOCESE OF JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

3) Occasionally when I share a Scripture with you from the Sacred Heart League (SHL) Catholic New Testament and notice that it lacks depth and clarity, I will then follow it with the same verse but in the King James Version in order to give you a better understanding of what is being said, and so that you can see what is missing from the SHL translation.

4) Very briefly in this series, I will also be quoting from THE CATHOLIC DOUAY RHEIMS VERSION OF THE BIBLE – in which you will find the following statements:

“EXCERPT FROM ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR HOLY FATHER BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE:

“The God of all Providence, Who in the adorable designs of His love at first elevated the human race to the participation of the Divine nature, and afterwards delivered it from the universal guilt and ruin, restoring it to its primitive dignity, has in consequence bestowed upon man a splendid gift and safeguard–making known to him, by supernatural means, the hidden Mysteries of His divinity, His wisdom, and His mercy. For although in Divine revelations there are contained some things which are not beyond the reach of unassisted reason, and which are made the objects of such revelation in order “that all may come to know them with facility, certainty, and safety from error, yet not on this account can supernatural Revelation be said to be absolutely necessary; it is only necessary because God has ordained man to a supernatural end.” This supernatural revelation according to the belief of the universal Church, is contained both in unwritten Tradition, and in written Books, which are therefore called sacred and canonical because, “being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the Church.” (Page ix)

“Wherefore it must be recognised that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide; God so disposing, as the Holy Fathers commonly teach, in order that men may investigate them with greater ardour and earnestness, and that what is attained with difficulty may sink more deeply into the mind and heart; and, most of all that they may understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and their teacher. St. Irenaeus long since laid down, that where the charismata of God were, there the truth was to be learnt, and that Holy Scripture was safely interpreted by those who had the Apostolic succession. His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in the renewing of the decree of Trent, declares its “mind” to be this–that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (Page xvii)

“Wherefore the first and dearest object of the Catholic commentator should be to interpret those passages which have received an authentic interpretation either by the sacred writers themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (as in many places of the New Testament), or from the Church, under the assistance of the same Holy Spirit, whether by her solemn judgment or her ordinary and universal magisterium –to interpret those passages in that identical sense, and to prove, by all the resources of science that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation. In the other passages, the analogy of faith should be followed, and Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law; for seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.” (Page xviii)

“For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should nevertheless, bear well in mind–as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages –that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture and never attain its pith.” (Page xix)

In PART 1 of this new series I shared the most concerning information with you that can be found in the first fifty five pages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). To those of you who are Catholic, you were also presented with the question of making the decision to choose between believing what God’s Word has to say, or what Catholicism teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The format in this particular post will be a little different due to the fact that the information in this next section of the CCC I will be sharing with you in this particular post requires me to address some serious concerns

Now, please take a minute to pray for discernment again, and then we will continue on in this series comparing the teachings from the CCC to the Scriptures in the Sacred Heart League Catholic New Testament.

In this installment you will begin to see a few glimpses of how some of the teachings presented in Catholicism are rooted in mysticism which is what made me realize that I needed to change my original plans concerning how I was going to present these posts to you. When I first began writing this series I just wanted the content of each post to simply be the teachings that can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and on God’s Word as presented in the Catholic New Testament Bible, and I was going to address any concerns that came up in these teachings in separate posts after I was finished going through the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, realizing that not everyone who reads one post in this series is going to read every post in this series, I prayerfully came to the decision to begin sharing important information with you when these issues pertaining to mysticism come up to keep things as orderly as possible in this series. That means that I will be going back to PART 1 in this series in order to add something that I intentionally left out concerning mysticism which I was going to address at a later time.

As this series progresses, I will be presenting you with at least two posts devoted to showing you just how steeped in mysticism some of the teachings of Catholicism truly are, which will shock many of you –especially some of you who are Catholic. Once again I will be refraining from making any additional comments at this time, except for adding a few ‘notes’ and some important information in order to point some things out to you in order to help you learn to discern. It is my prayer that God, by His Holy Spirit, will open your eyes to see the serious problems in some of these teachings. With all of that in mind, let’s begin:

CHAPTER 1 – PART 2

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: THE PROFESSION OF FAITH (CONT).

SECTION TWO – THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH – THE CREEDS

“Our presentation of the faith will follow the Apostles’ Creed, which constitutes, as it were, “the oldest Roman catechism.” The presentation will be completed however by constant references to the Nicene Creed which is often more explicit and more detailed.” (Para 196)

“As on the day of our Baptism, when our whole life was entrusted to the “standard of teaching,” let us embrace the Creed of our life-giving faith. To say the Credo with faith is to enter into communion with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and also with the whole Church which transmits the faith to us and whose midst we believe: This Creed is the spiritual seal, our heart’s meditation and an ever-present guardian; it is unquestionably, the treasure of our soul.” (Para 197)

“Before his Passover, Jesus announced the sending of “another Paraclete” (Advocate), the Holy Spirit. At work since creation, having previously “spoken through the prophets,” the Spirit will now be with and in the disciples, to teach them and guide them “into all the truth.” The Holy Spirit is thus revealed as another divine person with Jesus and the Father.” (Para 243) (NOTE: I will be referring back to some of these statements concerning the Holy Spirit when we get to another related topic further along in this series, so please keep the above thoughts in the back of your mind. I will share those certain statements above with you again later, as well).

Now please carefully read the following Canticle of the Creatures which was written by St. Francis, and ask yourself if the terminology used lines up with Biblical Christianity, or if it more closely resembles New Age mysticism/paganism:

“There is a solidarity among all creatures arising from the fact that all have the same Creator and are all ordered to his glory:

“May you be praised, O Lord, in all your creatures, especially brother sun, by whom you give us light for the day; he is beautiful, radiating great splendor, and offering us a symbol of you, the Most High…”

“May you be praised, my Lord, for sister water, who is very useful and humble, precious and chaste… “May you be praised, my Lord, for sister earth, our mother, who bears and feeds us, and produces the variety of fruits and dappled flowers and grasses…Praise and bless my Lord, give thanks and serve him in all humility…” (Para 344) (St. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Creatures)

Thoughts for you to consider:

Is the sun our brother? Is water our sister? Is the earth really to be considered as our sister, and our mother? Is the earth responsible for bearing and feeding us? Or is it God who created us and who provides for us? Yes, Francis clearly gives praise to God in his Canticle of the Creatures, but by presenting his readers with imagery that attempts to establish some sort of a relationship or a unity/oneness that we have with creation, he seems to be painting a pagan or pantheistic world view instead of a Biblical world view in the minds of those who read his Canticle.

Here is a Scripture that came to mind as I was reading the Canticle of the Creatures:

“God’s wrath is revealed coming down from heaven upon all the sin and evil of men whose evil ways prevent the truth from being known. God punishes them, because what men can know about God is plain to them. Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen. Men can perceive them in the things that God has made. So they have no excuse at all! They know God, but they do not give him the honor that belongs to him, nor do they thank him. Instead, their thoughts have become complete nonsense and their empty minds are filled with darkness. They say they are wise but they are fools; instead of worshiping the immortal God, they worship images made to look like mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Because men are such fools, God has given them over to do the filthy things their hearts desire and they do shameful things with each other. They exchange the truth about God for a lie; they worship and serve what God has created instead of the Creator Himself, who is to be praised forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:18-25) Sacred Heart League Catholic New Testament (SHLCNT)

At this point I now find it necessary to share some further information with you concerning St. Francis of Assisi:

The only thing that I remember learning about St. Francis as I attended Catholic school as a child is that he was a kind and gentle Roman Catholic friar. Due to the fact that he is considered to be the patron saint of Italy and of animals and the environment, he was and is often pictured in the scenic outdoors with little animals:

However, after doing research for this post, I discovered that he was a mystic as well as “the first recorded *stigmatic *(a person who claims to manifest the wounds of the crucified Christ in their hands, and sometimes in their feet and side, from which blood oftentimes flows from these wounds) in Christian history,” according to the following information on Wikipedia:

For those of you who have never heard about those who have claimed to have borne the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, below you will find some information to test in light of Scripture. I would like to draw your attention to the following paragraph that you will find in the second quick capture below to point out the unbiblical nature of these manifestations:

Facts concerning the wounds of the stigmata

The purpose of the wounds is to draw and unite the chosen individual into a special union with Jesus in his passion for the conversion of sinners and to make reparation for sins. Thus, individuals who are given the grace of the stigmata are always considered “victim souls” because they suffer in union with Jesus for the conversion of sinners.

To claim that those who suffer with the wounds of Christ have “a special union with Jesus in His passion” in order “to make reparation for sins” is clearly denying the sufficiency of Jesus’ “once for all” sacrifice for our sins when He willingly died in our place on the cross, and it is also adding to Scripture. Yet many Catholics will choose to believe this because it is accepted and taught by the Catholic Church as part of Tradition which is put on the same level of importance and authenticity as the Bible, but, once again, one must make the choice to believe God’s Word over the words of men when they come in conflict with one another, and especially when a teaching somehow clearly denies the sufficiency of Jesus Christ’s “once for all” sacrifice.

“For those of you who are Catholic, here is a quick capture of a portion of a similar article from a Catholic source that you might prefer:

As you can see from the quick capture below of some rather revealing information, mediums and Buddhists have also been stigmatics which should add to one’s concern about the source of these manifestations:

ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE THE WORD OF GOD? OR THE WORD OF MAN?

So, dear Catholic, are you going to believe the Word of God and place your trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross in your place as full payment for your sins? Or will you instead choose to believe that more suffering needs to be added to the sufferings of Jesus Christ in order for you to receive God’s forgiveness?

Rejoice in what Jesus Christ has already done for you and place your trust in Him alone! In John 6:28,29 we see a crowd of people asking Jesus a question that is in the hearts of many people even today, because accepting the free gift of salvation that was paid with the high price of the blood of Jesus seems to be too simple and too good to be true:

“So they asked him, “What can we do in order to do God’s works?” Jesus answered, “This is the work God wants you to do: believe in the one he sent.”

A similar account is recorded in Acts 16 after Paul and Silas had been severely beaten and thrown in jail, and the jailer was given strict orders to lock them up tight:

“Upon receiving this order the jailer threw them into the inner cell and fastened their feet between heavy blocks of wood. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was a violent earthquake which shook the prison to its foundations. At once all the doors opened, and the chains fell off all the prisoners. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open he thought that all the prisoners had escaped; so he pulled out his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul shouted at the top of his voice, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” The jailer called for a light, rushed in, and fell trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas. Then he led them out and asked, “What must I do, sirs, to be saved?” “Believe in the Lord Jesus,” they said, “and you will be saved–you and your family.” Then they preached the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.”

One must keep in mind though, that in James 2:19 it says that “the demons also believe [in God]–and tremble with fear.” And Scripture also records that the demons know exactly who Jesus Christ is (Matthew 8:28-32, Mark 1:23-27, Luke 4:3-35,41, 8:26-29), and yet they will not be saved; their fate was already sealed after they chose to rebel against God.

Here are a few of the above cited Scriptures:

“Jesus came to the territory of the Gadarenes, on the other side of the lake, and was met by two men who came out of the burial caves. These men had demons in them and were so fierce that no one dared travel on that road. At once they screamed, “What do you want with us, Son of God? Have you come to punish us before the right time?” (Matthew 8:28-30)

“They came to the town of Capernaum, and on the next Sabbath Day Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people who heard him were amazed at the way he taught. He wasn’t like the teachers of the law; instead he taught with authority. Just then a man with an evil spirit in him came into the synagogue and screamed, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are: you are God’s holy messenger!” Jesus commanded the spirit, “Be quiet, and come out of the man!” The evil spirit shook the man hard, gave a loud scream, and came out of him. The people were all so amazed that they started saying to each other, “What is this? Some kind of new teaching? This man has authority to give orders to the evil spirits, and they obey him!” (Mark 1:21-27)

Hell – Created for the devil and his angels:

“Then he [Jesus] will say to those on his left, “Away from me, you that are under God’s curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels!” (Matthew 25:41)(SHLCNT) (Note: I inserted “Jesus” in this verse).

True belief unto salvation means that we must rely fully upon and place our complete trust in Jesus Christ’s sinless life, His death in our place upon the cross for our sin and guilt, and in His glorious bodily resurrection from the dead as our only means of forgiveness from sin and guilt and the only way to be able to have a relationship with God; there is only (1) one way to God, (2) one Mediator between God and men, and (3) one name given among men by which we must be saved –Jesus Christ.

(1) “Jesus answered him, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6) (SHLCNT)

(2) “For there is one God, and there is one who brings God and men together, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself to redeem all men.” (1 Timothy 2:5) (SHLCNT)

(3) “Salvation is to be found through him alone; for there is no one else in all the world, whose name God has given to men, by whom we can be saved.” (Acts 4:12) (SHLCNT)

RELATED SCRIPTURES FOR YOU TO REFLECT UPON

“For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked, at the time that God chose. It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may be that someone might dare to die for a good person. But God has shown us how much he loves us; it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! By his death we are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God’s wrath. We were God’s enemies, but he made us his friends through the death of his Son. Now that we are God’s friends, how much more will we be saved by Christ’s life!” (Romans 5:6-10) SHLCNT

“So then, as the one sin condemned all men, in the same way the one righteous act sets all men free and gives them life. And just as many men were made sinners as the result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way many will be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man.” (Romans 5:18,19) SHLCNT

“The Jewish High Priest goes into The Holy Place every year with the blood of an animal. But Christ did not go in to offer himself many times; for then he would have had to suffer many times ever since the creation of the world. Instead, he has now appeared once and for all, when all ages of time are nearing the end, to remove sin through the sacrifice of himself. Everyone must die once, and after that be judged by God. In the same manner, Christ also was offered in sacrifice once to take away the sins of many. He will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are waiting for him.” (Hebrews 9:24-28) SHLCNT

“Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all made clean from sin by the offering that he made of his own body, once and for all.” (Hebrews 10:10) SHLCNT

“For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life you received from your ancestors. It was not something that loses its value, such as silver or gold; you were set free by the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or spot. He had been chosen by God before the creation of the world, and was revealed in these last days for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from death and gave him glory; and so your faith and hope are fixed on God.” (1 Peter 1:18-21) SHLCNT

“For Christ himself died for you; once and for all he died for sins, a good man for bad men in order to lead you to God. He was put to death physically, but made alive spiritually.” (1 Peter 3:18) SHLCNT

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18) (KJV)

In the Book of Revelation God’s Word is clear about the fate of those who add to or who take away from what His Word has to say. Although this verse is specifically referring to the prophecies in the Book of Revelation, this should produce fear in the heart of anyone who dares to tamper with God’s Word!

“I, John, solemnly warn everyone who hears the prophetic words of this book: if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to his punishment the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away anything from the prophetic words of this book, God will take away from his share of the fruit of the tree of life, and his share of the Holy City, which are described in this book.” (Revelation 22:18,19) (SHLCNT)

If you choose to listen to the following poem by Saint Francis, please pray for discernment so that you will not be misled by your emotions, and be sure to test his words against Scripture:

Eckhart Tolle is often seen with Oprah, and he promotes New Age mysticism as you will see in the following video:

When you have someone who is a New Age leader promoting Saint Francis, this should be a clear indication to you that the spirituality of Saint Francis was not quite Christian!

Now back to sharing a few more teachings with you from the CCC before I end this particular post:

“After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall. This passage in Genesis is called the Protoevangelium (“first gospel”): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between a serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers. (Para 410)

“The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the “New Adam” who, “because he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross,” makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience of Adam. Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the Protoevangelium, as Mary, the mother of Christ, the “new Eve.” Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.” (Para 411)

At this point I find it necessary to pause once again in order to share some important information with you concerning the Protoevangelium before addressing another concern in the above paragraph:

As you can see from the quick capture below, “…the Protevangelium is God’s statement to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden about how the Seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head.”

“I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” (Genesis 3:15) (Douay-Rheims Version)

If you click HERE, you will discover that the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible version is the only one that translated the second half of Genesis 3:15 as “…she shall crush thy head…”

In a video that I will be sharing with you at a later time in this series, Rob Zins of ‘A Christian Witness to Roman Catholicism,’ (CWRC) says the following concerning Genesis 3:15:

“Now this “she shall crush thy head” is interpreted by Roman Catholic scholars to be a reference to Mary. This is the beginning. Now we object to this right at the start of it. The Douay Rheims version of the Roman Catholic Bible has a footnote under verse 15 which says, “she shall crush; ipsa; the woman.” The ipsa here is a mistake. The Latin Vulgate translated this with an ipsa –she. It should have been ipse –masculine; he. Every Protestant Bible and every other version of the Bible written has “he” in reference to the Lord Jesus Christ; He shall crush thy head.” It is not she, it is he. The Latin Vulgate mistranslated this, and as a result it was carried through. The original Hebrew text has masculine pronoun. Even the Greek Septuagint is masculine in this case. Why do the Catholics continue to say, “She, she, she.” The answer is at the Council of Trent the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible was declared to be the one and only translation acceptable to the Roman Catholic religion, so they are stuck with “she” here, even though their own theologians will admit it’s a mistake; it should be he. But the greater mistake, other than the language mistake, is the idea that this she here is in reference to Mary, and they begin with a tiny ice particle at the top of the hill and they say, “Well if it’s a she it must begin with Mary,” and they begin building a doctrine of Mary right from this point. It’s a little ice particle that rolls down the hill, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until at the bottom it’s a giant, thundering, bulldozing boulder of Marian theology, but it begins right here in Genesis 3:15.”

Here is a Commentary by Matthew Henry followed by a portion of Barnes’ Notes on the Bible concerning Genesis 3:14,15 that you might be interested in reading`:

RELATED SCRIPTURES

The other concern from Para 411 of the CCC that I would also like to bring to your attention is the following statement:

“Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.” (Para 411)

God’s Word reveals to us that all of us are sinners — and oh so much more — in these passages of Scripture:

“As the Scriptures say: “There is no one who is righteous, no one who understands, or who seeks for God. All men have turned away from God; they have all gone wrong; no one does what is good, not even one.”(Romans 3:10-12)

“Now we know that everything in the Law applies to those who live under the Law, in order to stop all human excuses and bring the whole world under God’s judgment. Because no man is put right in God’s sight by doing what the Law requires; what the Law does is to make man know that he has sinned. But now God’s way of putting men right with himself has been revealed, and it has nothing to do with the Law. The Law and the prophets gave their witness to it: God puts men right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ, because there is no difference at all; all men have sinned and are far away from God’s saving presence. But by the free gift of God’s grace they are all put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free. God offered him so that by his death he should become the means by which men’s sins are forgiven, through their faith in him. God did this in order to demonstrate his righteousness. In the past, he was patient and overlooked men’s sins; but now in the present time he deals with men’s sins, to demonstrate his righteousness. In this way God shows that he himself is righteous and that he puts right everyone who believes in Jesus.” (Romans 3:19-26)

“So then, as the one sin condemned all men, in the same way the one righteous act sets all men free and gives them life.” (Romans 5:18)

For those of you who are Catholic, all that I ask you to do is to please pray for God to reveal His truth to you if you decide to read that portion of my testimony and if you choose to read the rest of the posts that I (Lord willing) will be sharing with you in this series.

Lord willing, in the next post in this series (that I am hoping to have completed in August) we will begin going through many of the teachings in Chapter 2 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and continue comparing them to Scripture. In the mean time I hope and pray that many of you — those of you who are Catholic and those of you who have placed your complete trust only in the finished work of Jesus Christ as full payment for your sins — are coming to realize the importance of testing the teachings of every pastor, teacher — and priest — against Scripture, as God’s Word clearly shows us that we are to do:

“As soon as night came, the brothers sent Paul and Silas to Berea. When they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue. The people there were more open-minded than the people in Thessalonica. They listened to the message with great eagerness, and every day they studied the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was really true.” (Acts 17:11) (SHLCNT)

“Put all things to the test: keep what is good, and avoid every kind of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21,22) (SHLCNT)

Dear Catholic, when I was still a Catholic I believed with all of my heart that the Catholic Church was the “one true church” as we were taught. However, after reading God’s Word in that little Catholic New Testament I discovered too much evidence that proved many of their teachings not only contradicted Scripture, but also their teachings did not give Jesus Christ the honor and praise that was due to Him for all that He did for us by paying the debt for our sins and guilt in full! As hard as it was at first, the moment God opened my eyes to see the truth of the glorious good news of the gospel — that Jesus Christ’s death was enough to satisfy God’s wrath that He has towards us because of our sins — I finally came to realize that I must choose to believe God’s Word over the words of men. When it was Jesus Christ whom I chose to believe and to follow, true joy and peace filled my heart. It then became easy to leave the false teachings of Catholicism behind, and all fear of death and doubt of where I would spend eternity vanished.

The Virgin Mary was a humble, obedient woman who chose to obey God and who willingly gave her consent to God to carry Jesus within her womb, but it is Jesus Christ who willingly came to lay His life down by dying a horrendously painful death in our place on the cross and who paid the price for our sins and therefore deserves all of our praise and attention –not Mary. When it comes to our eternal destination we must be certain about where we should place our trust. Our trust must not be in a church, in creeds, in deeds, or in anything or in anyone else, other than in the truth revealed in God’s Word, and in Jesus Christ alone!

Thank you very much for stopping by and taking time out of your relaxing weekend (at least I hope that it has been) to read some of my posts and poems.

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

MORE SCRIPTURES FOR YOU TO REFLECT ON:

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:6-9)

“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” (2 Corinthians 11:3,4)

“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.” (2 Peter 2:1)

“I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16)

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” (Matthew 7: 13-15)

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men. after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

“Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.” (Acts 20:26-31)

It has been quite a while since I have presented you with an end of the month Survey Saturday post,and even though today is Sunday I still decided to do this post for three important reasons:

1) In light of the new series on Catholicism that I just started, I’d like to see just how many of you are former Catholics, and how many of you are presently Catholic yet may have some questions or concerns. So if you would please consider taking part in this survey it would help me greatly.

2) I have heard from a few subscribers to this blog that they have not been receiving notices from WordPress concerning when new posts are published on this blog, and I’d like to try and do something to remedy this problem. So if you have subscribed to this blog and have not always been notified, please vote accordingly on the poll below so that I can see if this is just a minor problem, or a larger and continuous one.

3) When reading the titles of the posts that people have read over the past week or so, I have been noticing that the ‘If You’d Like To Contact Me’ post has been read at least a few times, and yet I have not been contacted by anyone. So in order to see if there is also a problem with me receiving your messages, please vote accordingly on that question, as well. I don’t want any of you to think that the reason you didn’t receive a reply from me is because I don’t care about things that concern you.

So with all of that in mind, I’d now like to present you with three surveys, and would deeply appreciate it if you’d please consider participating in them. These polls remain active for a full week, so please place your vote by next Saturday afternoon.

Thank you ahead of time for your participation!

If you took time to participate in the surveys above, thank you so very much!

Thank you very much also for stopping by and taking time out of your relaxing Summer weekend (at least I hope that it has been so far) to read some of my posts and poems.

God Bless You

~Mary/Living4HisGlory

UPDATE:

1) Lord willing, I hope to find a good sermon to present to you later on today.

2) Lord willing, later today or during the week I will begin writing Part 2 in the new series in which we will continue comparing the Catholic New Testament Bible to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is my continued hope and prayer that God’s Holy Spirit will open the hearts and minds of Catholics to the truth revealed in Scripture so that they would come to know true joy and peace that comes from knowing who Jesus Christ truly is as God’s Word reveals Him to be. I also pray that they will come to understand all that Jesus Christ accomplished for us through His sinless life, His death on the cross in our place because of our sins, and through His glorious resurrection from the dead. I hope to have it completed in a week or so, depending on how much free time I have.

There are two very important reasons why I felt compelled to write this series of posts, and I’d like to briefly share these reasons with you now before I go any further:

1) Since I am a former Catholic who is very aware of the teachings of the Catholic Church because I attended twelve years of Catholic school, attended Catechism classes, made my First Holy Communion, was Confirmed, and faithfully attended Mass not only every Sunday, but also before school began for three years (as required by the school that I attended at the time), and who came to the knowledge of who Jesus Christ truly is and what He actually accomplished for us by reading a Catholic New Testament Bible exactly like the one pictured above, I decided to write this series with the hope of reaching Catholics so that they can not only come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ truly is as His Word, the Bible, declares Him to be, but also so they can see by reading God’s Word that they can have complete forgiveness, lasting joy, true peace, and the assurance of salvation if they choose to believe God’s Word and place their trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. Also, since many Catholics do not realize everything that the Catholic church actually teaches (as I once did not realize until after doing research and reading the CCC), I thought that it was extremely important to share this information to make Catholics aware of many things that are quite disturbing, as you will all soon become aware of as this series continues.

2) This series of posts is also being written with the intention of helping those of you who are born-again, Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ who have no idea of what the teachings of Catholicism are so that you can become aware of their teachings and be prepared to offer hope and assurance of salvation through Jesus Christ to Catholics based solely upon the truth that is recorded in God’s Word.

As we begin this series together comparing Scriptures in the Catholic New Testament to teachings found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we must keep these important thoughts in mind:

When it comes to our eternal destination — heaven or hell — we must be certain that we place our trust in solid truth and not in speculation or in the traditions of men. The Catholic church claims to be the “one true Church.” Therefore, it stands to reason that their teachings must line up with God’s Word and not contradict it since God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8), and His Word stands firm forever. (Psalm 119:89, Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24,25) If a contradiction is found it must be rejected because God’s Word is our plumb line by which we must measure (or test) the teachings of every religion to see if it lines up or not. If it is off in one point we can be certain that it will lead us further and further away from Biblical truth and lead us into spiritual deception.

This series will cover many different subjects ranging from what does the Catholic Church teach about the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, priests, the pope, sin, forgiveness of sins, salvation, prayer, and what must a Catholic believe in order to receive eternal life. Some of these teachings will shock even many Catholics when they learn what their church actually teaches!

Lord willing, I hope to share at least one post every month with you in this new series until I have covered all the most important teachings that need to be brought to your attention. The main goal that I have in writing this series is to present the Word of God to Catholics — and to every person — in order to point everyone to Jesus Christ, who is our only hope and ‘the only name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved.’ (Acts 4:12)

Dear Catholic, please take a minute now to pray, asking God to open your mind to the Scriptures and to reveal the truth to you –whatever that may be.

Because only God can reveal the truth to you I will refrain from making any comments unless I find it completely necessary. Since God’s Word is truth I trust that He will not only give you eyes to see the truth, but also I trust that He will give you the courage to respond to His leading. However, each one of you will find yourself having to answer this question when you come to each point that I present to you in these posts after realizing that there are oftentimes extreme differences between what the Word of God says and what Catholicism teaches, and the question that you will have to answer is:

“Are you going to believe the Word of God, or the word of man?”

Let’s begin:

Please keep in mind, as you are carefully reading all of the statements made from the following Catholic sources, that every time you see the word “church” spelled with a capital c they are referring to the Catholic church, since they believe that the “Catholic Church” alone is the “one true Church.”

All of the information that I will be sharing with you I have obtained from the following sources:

1) CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (pictured above) – Imprimi Potest – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) – Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church

“At the conclusion of this document presenting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I beseech the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word and Mother of the Church, to support with her powerful intercession the catechetical work of the entire church on every level at this time when she is called to a new effort of evangelization.”

“Given October 11, 1992, the thirteenth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, in the fourteenth year of my Pontificate.” ~Joannes Paulus II(Signature in Latin)

2) THE WORD OF GOD – THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR IN TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION – SACRED HEART LEAGUE EDITION – IMPRIMATUR JOHN FRANCIS WHEALON, ARCHBISHOP OF HARTFORD, APRIL 15, 1971 SIGNED AND SEALED BY BISHOP JOSEPH B. BRUNINI, DIOCESE OF JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

3) Occasionally when I share a Scripture with you from the Sacred Heart League (SHL) Catholic New Testament and notice that it lacks depth and clarity, I will then follow it with the same verse but in the King James Version in order to give you a better understanding of what is being said, and so that you can see what is missing from the SHL translation.

4) Very briefly in this series, I will also be quoting from THE CATHOLIC DOUAY RHEIMS VERSION OF THE BIBLE – in which you will find the following statements:

“EXCERPT FROM ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF OUR HOLY FATHER BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE:

“The God of all Providence, Who in the adorable designs of His love at first elevated the human race to the participation of the Divine nature, and afterwards delivered it from the universal guilt and ruin, restoring it to its primitive dignity, has in consequence bestowed upon man a splendid gift and safeguard–making known to him, by supernatural means, the hidden Mysteries of His divinity, His wisdom, and His mercy. For although in Divine revelations there are contained some things which are not beyond the reach of unassisted reason, and which are made the objects of such revelation in order “that all may come to know them with facility, certainty, and safety from error, yet not on this account can supernatural Revelation be said to be absolutely necessary; it is only necessary because God has ordained man to a supernatural end.” This supernatural revelation according to the belief of the universal Church, is contained both in unwritten Tradition, and in written Books, which are therefore called sacred and canonical because, “being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and as such have been delivered to the Church.” (Page ix)

“Wherefore it must be recognised that the sacred writings are wrapt in a certain religious obscurity, and that no one can enter into their interior without a guide; God so disposing, as the Holy Fathers commonly teach, in order that men may investigate them with greater ardour and earnestness, and that what is attained with difficulty may sink more deeply into the mind and heart; and, most of all that they may understand that God has delivered the Holy Scriptures to the Church, and that in reading and making use of His Word, they must follow the Church as their guide and their teacher. St. Irenaeus long since laid down, that where the charismata of God were, there the truth was to be learnt, and that Holy Scripture was safely interpreted by those who had the Apostolic succession. His teaching, and that of other Holy Fathers, is taken up by the Council of the Vatican, which, in the renewing of the decree of Trent, declares its “mind” to be this–that “in things of faith and morals, belonging to the building up of Christian doctrine, that is to be considered the true sense of Holy Scripture which has been held and is held by our Holy Mother the Church whose place it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; and therefore that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture against such sense or also against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.” (Page xvii)

“Wherefore the first and dearest object of the Catholic commentator should be to interpret those passages which have received an authentic interpretation either by the sacred writers themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost (as in many places of the New Testament), or from the Church, under the assistance of the same Holy Spirit, whether by her solemn judgment or her ordinary and universal magisterium –to interpret those passages in that identical sense, and to prove, by all the resources of science that sound hermeneutical laws admit of no other interpretation. In the other passages, the analogy of faith should be followed, and Catholic doctrine, as authoritatively proposed by the Church, should be held as the supreme law; for seeing that the same God is the author both of the Sacred Books and of the doctrine committed to the Church, it is clearly impossible that any teaching can by legitimate means be extracted from the former, which shall in any respect be at variance with the latter. Hence it follows that all interpretation is foolish and false which either makes the sacred writers disagree one with another, or is opposed to the doctrine of the Church.” (Page xviii)

“For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should nevertheless, bear well in mind–as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages –that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture and never attain its pith.” (Page xix)

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: PART 1 – THE PROFESSION OF FAITH

1) SCRIPTURE OR THE TRADITIONS OF MEN – WHICH WILL YOU BELIEVE?

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

“The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.” (Para 66)

“Throughout the ages, there have been so-called”private” revelations, some of which have been recognized by the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church. Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such “revelations.” (Para 67)

“Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” (Para 82)

“It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” (Para 95)

“The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope, and to the Bishops in communion with him.” (Para 100)

CATHOLIC NEW TESTAMENT:

“Jesus answered them, “How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you! You are hypocrites, just as he wrote: ‘These people, says God, honor me with their words, but their heart is really far away from me. It is no use for them to worship me because they teach man-made commandments as though they were God’s rules!’ “You put aside the commandment of God and obey the teachings of men.”

“In this way you disregard the word of God with the teachings you pass on to others.” (Mark 7:6-8,13)

“See to it, then, that no one makes a captive of you with the worthless deceit of human wisdom which comes from the teachings handed down by men, and from the ruling spirits of the universe, and not from Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

“For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life you received from your ancestors. It was not something that loses its value, such as silver or gold; you were set free by the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or spot.” (1 Peter 1:18,19)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

2) SALVATION THROUGH JESUS OR THE CHURCH? WHICH WILL YOU BELIEVE?

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

“I believe” (Apostles’ Creed) is the faith of the Church professed personally by each believer, principally during Baptism. “We believe” (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) is the faith of the Church confessed by the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers. “I believe” is also the Church, our mother, responding to God by faith as she teaches us to say both “I believe” and “We believe.” (Para 167)

“It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes, and sustains my faith. It is through the Church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by Baptism.” (Para 168)

“Salvation comes from God alone; but because we receive the life of faith through the Church, she is our mother: “We believe the Church as the mother of our new birth, and not in the Church as if she were the author of our salvation.” Because she is our mother, she is also our teacher in the faith.” (St. Cyprian, De unit. 6: PL 4, 519). (Para 169)

“Believing” is an ecclesial act. The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports, and nourishes our faith. The Church is the Mother of all believers. “No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.” (Para 181)[NOTE: Ecclesial: Something related to a church or its function and teachings.]

CATHOLIC NEW TESTAMENT:

“For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to be its Judge, but to be its Savior. Whoever believes in the Son is not judged; whoever does not believe has already been judged because he has not believed in God’s only Son.” (John 3:16,17)

KJV says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

“If you declare with your lips, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.For we believe in our hearts and are put right with God; we declare with our lips and are saved.” (Romans 10:9,10)

KJV says: “So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

“I am afraid that your minds will be corrupted and that you will abandon your full and pure devotion to Christ–in the same way that Eve was deceived by the snake’s clever lies. For you gladly tolerate anyone who comes to you and preaches a different Jesus, not the one we preached; and you accept a spirit and a gospel completely different from the Spirit and the gospel you received from us!” (2 Corinthians 11:3,4)

“I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are going to another gospel. Actually there is no “other gospel,” but I say it because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell! We have said it before, and now I say it again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel that is different from the one you accepted, , may he be condemned to hell!” (Galatians 1:6-9)

“We believe the witness that men give; the witness that God gives is much stronger, and this is the witness that God has given about his Son. So whoever believes in the Son of God has this witness in his heart; but whoever does not believe God has made a liar out of him, because he has not believed what God has said as a witness about his Son. This, then, is the witness: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has this life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things so that you may know that you have eternal life–you that believe in the name of the Son of God.” (1 John 5:9-13)

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IN CONCLUSION:

I truly hope and pray that many Catholics will take the time to read this first post and continue reading this new series. It is also my prayer that God’s Holy Spirit will begin a work in their hearts, open their minds to the Scriptures, and give them eyes to at least be able to get a glimpse into the truly good news of the Biblical gospel that is there for them to discover if they will only read God’s Word and choose to believe it!

More good news coming soon –Lord willing!

Dear Catholic, your salvation truly does depend on Jesus Christ alone and not on the “Church,” the Sacraments, or upon obeying the ten commandments. For God’s Word says the following:

“I do not reject the grace of God. If a man is put right with God through the law, it means that Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21)

“What was the purpose of the law, then? It was added in order to show what wrongdoing is, and was meant to last until the coming of Abraham’s descendant, to whom the promise was made. The Law was handed down by angels, with a man acting as a go-between. But a go-between is not needed when there is only one person; and God is one. Does this mean that the Law is against God’s promises? No, not at all! For if a law had been given that could bring life to men, then man could be put right with God through law. But the Scripture has said that the whole world is under the power of sin, so that the gift which is promised on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” (Galatians 3:19-22)

“Salvation is to be found through him alone; for there is no one else in all the world, whose name God has given to men, by whom we can be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Another post in this new series will be coming next month (Lord willing), and we will look further into what the Catholic Church actually teaches on other important issues. We will also continue to compare everything against the truth of God’s Word because, when it comes to knowing the truth, the only one we can truly trust to reveal the truth to us is God, and God alone.

This post already has over 3,500 words, so I will end now to prevent my computer from crashing as it has done many times before when my posts began to get quite lengthy.

Thank you very much for stopping by and for taking time out of your relaxing Father’s Day weekend to read some of my posts and poems.

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Desiring for God to use all that I have been through in life, I decided to start my first blog, living4hisglory.wordpress.com, in order to write poems about some of those experiences to bring glory to God, as well as to share them with others with the hope of encouraging those of you who have been broken and shattered by life's circumstances and hurt by those who were supposed to have loved you rather than abuse you in some way.
Also, because of some pastors and teachers today who seem to be abandoning Biblical Christianity and instead seem to be either seeking to build their own empires and promoting their own agendas, and at times even leading the people in their churches into unbiblical, 'mystical practices' without some people even realizing it, I saw the importance and necessity to begin writing poems and posts in order to inform Christians, as well as to make Christians realize the extreme importance of testing what people say (who claim to speak for God) against the truth of God's Word, (Acts 17:11) so that they will not be deceived. It has never been -- nor shall it ever be -- my intention to bash any particular pastor or teacher; my sole purpose in bringing attention to false teachings is to make Christians realize that we are to be followers of Jesus Christ, and not to be followers of any man (or woman) and his (or her) ministry. I hope that you will be blessed -- as well as challenged -- by the things that I write.
In August of 2017 I started a new website to begin my new business as a Floral Designer, still with the same desire to live for God's glory, but this time by reflecting the beauty of God's creation through designing silk and high quality fax floral arrangements and centerpieces, and by helping and encouraging women who have always wanted to learn floral design. I will be teaching floral design classes for beginners so that women can learn how to design wreaths and floral arrangements, and I am also available locally to design arrangements for those who would rather have me create what they have in mind for their home, gift giving, or for a special event they may have coming up.
Thank you for stopping by and taking time to read some of my posts and poems.
God Bless You
~Mary

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